Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF

Rated R, 140 minutes, in French with subtitles

Directed by Christophe Gans

WHERE, WHEN

Now playing at the UA North

You should not have to read any further than this to be advised that the French megahit "Brotherhood of the Wolf (Pacte des Loups)" is a flagrantly ridiculous, riotously overripe exercise in genre-miscegenation. But it is not without entertainment value, though its charms do wear thin as it misses its turnoff and rambles on toward the two-and-a-half hour mark.

The film is based on the historical rampages of a huge cryptozoological creature known as the Beast of Gévaudan, said to resemble a wolf but the size of a cow, which roamed an area of south-central France for a few years in the 1760s, killing mostly women and children. It was shot many times but loped away unscathed until it was allegedly brought down by a hermit named Chastel with some bullets he'd had blessed at Notre-Dame de Beaulieu Cathedral. Or so the story goes.

Of course the movie story goes a lot further, stocked with a Natty Bumppo-esque French naturalist named de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan, "Venus Beauty Institute") and his faithful Indian companion Mani (Mark Dacascos, "The Crow" TV series), a diabolical one-armed villain (Vincent Cassel, "Birthday Girl"), a gorgeous Italian courtesan/spy (Cassel's wife Monica Belluci, "Malena"), and a saucy but virginal heroine (Emilie Dequenne, "Rosetta".) It also has the services of a beast (courtesy of the Jim Henson Creature Shop) that looks like a large Husky covered with papier maché and string, and moves like a creature trying to learn the rudiments of animatronics.

De Fronsac has been dispatched by Louis XV to get rid of this troublesome wolf, because the peasants are starting to read religious and political allegory into its reign of terror and perhaps even beginning to awaken to the first faint stirrings of revolution. The handsome naturalist has recently returned from the New World with Mani, an Iroquois who once saved his life (or vice versa.) They are both adept in martial arts, which presumably came across to North America from the Mysterious East before the closing of the land bridge. And they get a chance to practice these skills on gangs of French baddies, who obligingly attack them singly or in neatly choreographed twos and threes.

Director Gans, a former movie magazine editor, knows and loves his genres, and he's crammed as many of them in here as he possibly can: Hong Kong action, historical costume romance, political portent, monster, slasher, splatter, and even a little bit of "Eyes Wide Shut". There are some eye-popping erotic sequences, including one which finishes with a spectacular dissolve from Monica Bellucci's impressive chest to the snow-covered hills of Gévaudan.

The action moves along at an agreeable clip, the photography is sumptuous, with rain and snow and candlelight giving the air a texture as thick as paint. There are plenty of knowingly bad lines ("All women are the same color when the candle is blown out") and brooding performances from a mixed bag of French actors including the great Jean Yanne.

At one point they try to get a description of the creature from a little peasant girl who has outrun it and hidden in a cave, but they can't make much sense of her tale. "The child is incoherent," someone says. So is the movie. But it's lavish and extravagant, blissfully uncaring about its transgressions of taste, technique and history, and a lot of it is preposterous fun.

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X-RAMR-ID: 30936
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 284943
X-RT-TitleID: 1111814
X-RT-SourceID: 896
X-RT-AuthorID: 2779