Read

There is something pleasurable about watching a film with no idea of where the story is headed. The element of mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat and glued to the screen, desperate to understand every plot turn, to neatly fit the pieces together, only to have the film throw another twist your way and derail your understanding yet again. There is also something rewarding about watching a film with composition that feels like a breath of originality—something that looks different from the majority of films that come down the pipe and leaves you inspired by the inventiveness of its visual approach.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (2015) is a style-heavy thriller with a story so structurally beguiling that everything is cause for suspicion: Is this real? Is the titular lady crazy? What is really happening to her? These questions arise with every new, mysterious, tightly-edited change of scenery.

The film’s quirky title and lead character, Dany (Freya Mavor), are initially striking. The plot finds her skipping town with her boss’s (Benjamin Biolay) Thunderbird on an impromptu trip to the sea. She’s never seen the sea, she constantly reiterates, but her sexy joyride soon turns weird as she’s recognized everywhere she stops along the way. Everyone claims to have seen her the night before—a gorgeous redhead in a turquoise imported American muscle car, she is hard to forget. When a gun, a random physical assault, a brief sexual fling and a dead body are thrown into the mix, things get complex. The film’s momentum builds carefully throughout the piece, each new setting adding another layer to its growing mystique.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun’s cinematography is warm and inviting, with scenes of rich nature and black, shadowy neo-noir contrast creating luscious, luxurious images. Variety writes, “Sfar creates the eerie impression of being trapped in someone else’s dream.” Under the Radar adds, “Slick cars, micro-mini skirts, and impeccably dressed retro-modern locations prevail. In the role of Dany, Freya Mavor is employed mostly as visual pleasure, her charmingly freckled freshness and fashion plate physique working overtime.” Finally, Hollywood Reporter says that “what will lure some viewers in is deliberately old-school filmmaking that gives nods to 70’s-era Brian de Palma and Dario Argento, while bringing to mind recent nostalgic genre pieces. Sfar may not have much to work with here, but he works it to the bone, employing split-screen, flashbacks, flash-forwards and suggestive jump cuts, with cinematographer Manu Dacosse capturing it all in exquisite sepia-toned widescreen.”

As nice as those statements sound in regards to the film’s aesthetic, the same critics agree that the narrative payoff comes as a downer after the ultra-cool ride to get there, and each walked away labelling the film as “style over substance”—an oft-used derogatory phrase most of us accept without examining. But why do we assume a hierarchy in which substance necessarily trumps style, style must serve substance, or style in itself has no inherent value? Many say the film takes extra effort to “look cool” in an attempt to cover up its weak plot. But narrative isn’t everything—plenty of classic and revered works of cinema, from Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) to practically everything Godard ever made, is evidence of that point.

The Lady in the Car started out as a pulpy crime novel written in 1966 by Sébastien Japrisot. Its first film adaptation came in 1970, making this 2015 remake the third iteration of the tale. It isn’t a new story. Not much happens, and it ends a bit thin, yet people keep finding ways to reinvent the piece because what its story has is the potential to be told in interesting ways. The narrative of Sfar’s iteration is only one element, and it’s not the one we really should focus on. In essence, the film’s style doesn’t exist to compensate for the lack of substance—the style is the substance.

From side-scrolling transitional montages to indicate the passage of time to rain-soaked music video-esque moments of clarity, a wide range of cinematic approaches and flourishes give the film visual flavor and intensity. The film’s emphasis on visual exploration is symbolized in Dany’s titular glasses themselves, which underline the act of seeing. Dany often speaks to herself as if she is a different person with and without her glasses, suggesting a connection to their presence on her face and the oddities surrounding her story. She talks to herself in a number of scenes with a hint of schizophrenia—early on she even sees her glasses-on reflection in a mirror when she isn’t wearing them, in a curious moment bookended by the shifty behavior of her boss. And by the time the gun is discovered and makes its way on camera, the fearful Dany is captured in environments so dark and chilling, they provide a bitter emotional contrast to the brightness of the sea she longs to see.

The cinematic and visual games Sfar plays with the viewer aren’t to distract from the story—they are the story. We ride through the film as bewildered as the central character, uncovering new realities and questioning everything as the plot unfolds. That we engage in the film in such an intimate, visceral way is the filmmaker’s aim. That is the film’s substance.

There is something sinister or mystic about what happens to Dany—either that, or she is genuinely nuts. Every character appears to be hiding something or to be orchestrating some grand scheme, and Dany’s credibility as a point of view is constantly put into question. The fun of the film is in this slowly-building tension and the mixed bag of tricks used to keep the viewer confused and guessing.