Alleluia (2015)
Starring Lola Duenas, Laurent Lucas, Helena Noguerra
Directed by Fabrice du Welz
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that love can (and will) make people do some crazy things, and when two people attain a certain level of insanity when in love with each other… let’s just say that the sky’s the limit.
Alleluia, the latest venture into mad love from director Fabrice du Welz, takes lust to an entirely new plane of mental distress in a story about a man named Michel (Lucas) who plies his craft as a hardcore hustler: remorseless, uncaring, and as cold as the ice cube tray in your freezer. Peeled away from the true story of the Lonely Hearts Killers from the late 1940’s, du Welz uses a refreshing dose of backhanded sleaze tactics already mixed in with some sultry sex scenes and spices it up with a little dementia for flavor.
Michael’s forte is in the extortion of the females that he smooths over, racking up quite the impressive list of “victims,” if you will. His next target is funeral attendant Gloria (Duenas) – a woman that he meets online and is completely unaware of her mental shortcomings. Their initial interaction is slightly unwanted (on Gloria’s end), but she ultimately agrees to meet up with the man who has used his best words to lure her in – trouble definitely abounds.
Gloria’s nature brings her to sniff around after her and Michel’s maiden tryst, and she is able to deduce that Michel’s been anything but honest with her, although instead of raining hell down upon him, she allows him to continue bilking lonely hearts of their cash, just as long as he finds his way back to her. Just how long will this newly-found love connection continue to last? Let me just put it to you in the simplest words – things will NOT go smoothly, hearts will be broken, blood will be spilled… and in the end Gloria will most likely still be shit-house rat crazy. Duenas snags the MVP here for her performance as the damaged Gloria, and Lucas is sleaze-tastic in his depiction of a man who douses the ladies in charm, in turn to feed his own sick visions.
At times it feels as if the movie loses itself in its direction, straying away from the gameplan and slowing down to more than a crawl at intervals, but with Gloria’s actions, and some pretty seedy sex scenes, we’re thrust right back into the mix of an interesting story. The movie has the look and feel of a gritty, softcore porn in spots, and du Welz uses his actors to convey emotions that would downright scare off a normal crowd. This isn’t horror in the general sense, but more of a visceral look at something that drastically spirals out of control – very much worth a look.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
