35 Shots of Rum (2009)

How do you make a statue of an elephant? Easy–you take a big block of marble, and then carve away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. Similarly, if you wrote a screenplay and filmed it, edited out the meaningless material, and then assembled a movie using only that useless, extraneous footage, it would be much like 35 Shots Of Rum, which is perhaps the most pointless and boring film I have ever barely stayed awake through.

This movie by French director Claire Denis features a story with the depth of a grade-school primer: Meet Lionel (Alex Descas). He drives a subway train. He has a daughter, Jo (Mati Diop). She is a college student. She has a boyfriend, Noe (Gregoire Colin). He is their landlord. He is sensitive because he has a goatee and a cat. A cab driver lives next door. Her name is Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue). She likes Lionel and Jo. They do not seem to like her very much. We never know why. Lionel has a friend named Rene (Julieth Mars). Rene is retired from driving a subway train. Rene is sad. So is everyone in this film. Except for Gabrielle, who is the only one who smiles. We never know why.

This admittedly sarcastic summary is also sadly accurate, and is the best way I can illustrate that for nearly the entire length of 35 Shots of Rum, NOTHING HAPPENS. NOTHING. If you like to see endless shots of subway trains passing through the slums of Paris, this is the movie for you. But for those of us who prefer to see characters who actually speak instead of staring emotionlessly into the middle distance, this film is like watching paint dry.

A film should, at the very least, attempt to communicate something, anything, to its audience. A skillful director can speak volumes with minimal dialogue – 2001: A Space Odyssey and There Will Be Blood are two of many examples. In this pretentious piece of introspective malaise, every time there’s a scene where dialogue is exchanged, just when it seems like something important or meaningful is about to be said, director Denis cuts away to a completely different scene, usually another engineer-point-of-view shot of train tracks. She even has two chances to explain the significance of the title–a reference to a special drinking ritual Lionel reserves for certain occasions–and she squanders both chances. Though with this film’s capacity for inducing drowsiness, few may be conscious enough to care.

There are only three things in this film that generate any interest at all, and they are: 1) a fart; 2) an old song by The Commodores; and 3) a dead cat. Honestly. As we exited the theater, my date for the evening made a tremendous understatement when her first comment was, “Well, that wasn’t Avatar.” No, my dear, not by a long shot. In fact, we considered going out for our own 35 shots of rum, if only to attempt to salvage something positive out of this artless waste of celluloid that sucked nearly two hours from our lives. It was a strong reminder that just because a movie is in French with subtitles doesn’t mean it’s profound or even worth a damn.