A Brutal Game (1983, Jean-Claude Brisseau) (Patreon)

71/100

Second viewing, last seen at the 2003 Rotterdam Film Festival. (They ran a complete-as-of-then Brisseau retro, most of which I caught.) "Suggests The Glass Menagerie if Amanda were a tough-love serial killer instead of an aging Southern belle," reads my drive-by from back then, and that barely scratches the surface of how bizarre this movie is; hard to choose sides in the battle of wills between a father we know is murdering children and his disabled, deeply disturbed daughter, who's introduced fantasizing about bombing a crowded marketplace for fun. Emmanuelle Debever, who plays Isabelle, looks uncannily like the young Sarah Polley and has a similarly unnerving intensity. Bruno Cremer (best known as Serrano in Friedkin's Sorcerer) brooks zero nonsense. They actually rarely share the screen (which I hadn't remembered), yet it's implied that his semi-abusive disciplinarian tactics do in fact gradually shape her into a more compassionate, less warped person, even as it's made abundantly clear that they're part and parcel of his homicidal mania. In short, this film feels dangerous, in the best sort of way—if my taste in cinema is out of step with the current mood (and it sure does seem to be), it's because I'm drawn to scenarios that don't unmistakably demarcate laudable from hissable. I do think it would have been more effective for Dad's vendetta to be related to Isabelle in some way, rather than work-related; that revelation is something of a disappointment, which is probably why I noted in 2003 that the film "doesn't quite come together." But I stand by "Arresting sensibility at work here, mining unnerving emotional paradoxes from blatantly melodramatic material." Turned out I didn't enjoy Brisseau's other films nearly as much, though most of them have a certain, shall we say, primal appeal (at least for those attracted to women). This is his peak.

DISCLAIMER: I am legally required to love all movies with "game" in the title. The Game, House of Games, Forbidden Games, Funny Games (both of 'em!), Game Night, The Rules of the Game, The Crying Game...pretty much everything except the Hunger Games franchise. Oh, and He Got Game is just okay. And wait also Reindeer Games, that's sheer garbage. And omg The Imitation Game. You know what, never mind.