From the Archive – MOVIE REVIEW – Haute Tension

Originally posted 4/30/04

Haute Tension (High Tension) aka Switchblade Romance
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Lavasseur
Producers: Alexandre Arcady, Robert Benmussa
Stars: Cecile De France, Maiwenn, Philippe Nahon

Those who have lately impugned the stick-to-it-iveness of the French (as people who use phrases like “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” seem to be possibly impugning) would do well to not share such an opinion around the villain of Haute Tension (High Tension in English, the movie has also screened under the title Switchblade Romance). Not that it would matter what you said, or didn’t say, or did, or didn’t do, because this is one single-minded villain, and they will likely kill you anyway. If only their bullish determination could be focused on something more useful than decapitation.

If nothing else, Haute Tension shows that the French, through 25-year old director/co-writer Alexandre Aja, have closed the slasher movie gap with us Yanks. This is as bloody, jumpy, squirmy, cringe-inducing a suite of violence as you’ll see at the movies this year – except for The Passion of the Christ, of course.

Then again, you might not see it at all. Lions Gate Films acquired North American distribution rights to the movie at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, but it is sadistic enough to earn each letter and digit of its NC-17 rating. It uses everything from the de rigeur kitchen knives and axes to more adventurous weapons like power saws, barbed wire, and, in one case, a stairway banister (I’ll let you ponder that one on your own). So it remains to be seen if Lions Gate will risk a stubbornly anachronistic MPAA and a marketplace hell-bent on censoring itself.

It will not be because this movie is a superior piece of artistry that they do it. This is a movie with low ambitions, achieved stylishly. That it is in a foreign tongue is all but incidental, since long stretches go by with little to no dialogue, and a gushing throat wound has a way of crossing the language barrier.

After a brief and ominous prologue, we open on Alex (Maiwenn) and Marie (Cecile De France), two comely school mates on their way to Alex’s family farm in the countryside for some quiet study. The farm and farmhouse look like they were purchased on E-Bay from the family in Signs, and come complete with a swishy, threatening cornfield. In truth there are visual references to other horror movies all over this one, including genre pillars like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Aja is up to something here which is a little more than just an homage, but it’s hard to explain this without giving away a trick the movie has up its sleeve. After a long wait, we are at last given some answers as to why events are unfolding as they are. That these answers also raise a big basket full of other questions is something else which cannot be gotten into without spoiling things. The movie ultimately ends up being much more about the experience of being constantly tensed up and horrified, rather than seeing a story that makes sense. And at that it does succeed.

But back to our two schoolgirls. No sooner have they settled down for bed (and Marie has given us a potent demonstration of why she isn’t interested in losing her virginity to the boys at school), than a creepy, creakedy old van rumbles up to the house. A man (Phillipe Nahon), who we in the audience have already met and judged to be an exceedingly disturbed character, knocks on the door, the sleepy father opens it, and the mayhem begins.

We never get too clear a look at le tueur (as he’s billed in the credits), he’s often out of focus, in shadow, or hidden beneath his hat brim. But he’s sweaty, his breathing is raggedy-wet, and he looks sort of like the bad bits of M. Emmett Walsh and Dan Hedaya after a jug of moonshine. He carries a straight razor and wastes no time going to work with it.

Where Haute Tension strives to outstrip its forbears is in including everyone in the potential victim category. There are a very limited number of characters, and only two hot teens, so suddenly those who used to be in the saintly-protected category in slasher movies (children, dogs, etc.) are just as squarely in the firing line.

Aja demonstrates clear impatience about getting to this part. The establishing scenes have an accompanying soundtrack of distorted and amplified sound effects. It almost suggests that, without all the THRUM-und-WHINE noises squawking distorted out of the speakers, we might forget what kind of movie we’re in. It’s a bit clumsy, but easily forgiven once he gets a chance to show us what he can do.

For a movie that so lacks in shyness about shedding blood on camera, what’s surprising is how often Aja wrings effective scenes out of what he doesn’t show. One of the twitchiest moments of disgust involves nothing more than blood being dotted on a closet door as we listen to some nauseatingly squelchy sound effects; and a later scene in a truck stop restroom is impressive in that nothing’s-happening-which-makes-it-scarier vein M. Night Shyamalan is so good at milking.

I won’t pretend there’s grand purpose to Haute Tension, even the layer of understanding added by its trick ending doesn’t manage to hoist it to a higher platform. This is a polished, professional geek show put on by a filmmaker who knows his stuff. I hope his ambition grows, because too long in this genre and you’re just finding new ways to kill people, which is not a good use of anyone’s time.