Sofie Gheysens/Netflix / Sofie Gheysens/Netflix
CRITICAL – The feature film by Xavier Gens, available on June 5 on the platform, is a genre film which revisits the codes with formidable efficiency.
“The species that survive are not the strongest or most intelligent species, but those that adapt best to changes. » With this quote from Darwin as a preamble, Under the Seine, a horror film summoning a shark with all its teeth out, immediately marks its environmental concerns. “ It’s a blockbuster with an ecological conscienceconfirms Xavier Gens, author and director (Farang, Lupin, Gangs of London ). An impulse of generous popular cinema, comprising a subtext generating reflection and discussion important with regard to my commitment. »
An ironic reference to the Olympics
Xavier Gens is a fan of genre films: “ Telling ourselves that we will succeed in provoking extreme emotions in people, offering things that take us out of our daily lives, scaring people, dreaming and escaping through imagination, creating feelings and images that are out of the ordinary , it’s my favorite “, he readily admits. But approaching this codified universe is only of interest if we revisit its rules. The filmmaker notably chose to abandon the beaches of Sea teeth and others to situate its action in Paris during imaginary triathlon world championships in the summer of 2024 with swimming events in the Seine. Any reference to the Olympic Games being purely voluntary and adding an ironic topicality!
“The monster of the film is us”
As the competition approaches, a young ecological activist alerts a scientist: a shark, carrying a tag, is circulating in a river leading to the capital. Sophia (Bérénice Béjo – The Artist, The Past – very convincing), in mourning following a study mission where she lost her team of divers attacked by this same shark, in turn warns river police and desperately incredulous politicians… ” I wanted to renew myself, to do something different, confides the actress. And I find current French cinema quite good in genre films, with an interesting socio-cultural context. It’s a great way to talk about problems by shifting them a little. Why this shark in fresh water? Why is he aggressive? The monster of the film is not the shark, it is us, what we do with our world, how we pollute it and how we empty our oceans.
Paris and its catacombs
The underwater scenes, the plastic continent north of Hawaii like Paris and its catacombs dotted with skulls and bones (recreated to have total freedom of camera movement) offer a wonderful, very cinematic setting for a fiction all the more frightening as it seems reasonably plausible after the discovery of a beluga and an orca in the Seine in 2022. The special effects are in full play (the sound escalation was dispensable), with a certain jubilation at discovering the butchery announced!
A downside, the mayor of Paris, played by Anne Marivin (Welcome to the Ch’tis) seems caricatured to say the least. “ No way, defends the director. The more we tried to purify our dialogues, the further we moved away from realism. We took inspiration from existing interviews with politicians. These are comments repeated. This puts the finger on the media society we live in! »
