The Serpent

Source: The List (Issue 584)
Date: 23 August 2007
Written by: Miles Fielder

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(Eric Barbier, France, 2006) 119min

This slick French thriller – somewhat reminiscent of another recent export from that country, Tell No One – employs the familiar framed-for-murder/man-on-the-run scenario. The fugitive in question here is Parisian fashion photographer Vincent Mandel (Yvan Attal, last seen in Spielberg’s Munich), who’s having a tough enough time with a nasty divorce and custody battle for his kids, but whose life gets exponentially worse when he’s targeted by a blackmailer named Joseph Plender (Clovis Cornillac) and ends up taking the rap for the death of Plender’s partner in crime, a seducer sex-kitten named Sofia (Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko).

Adapted by writer-director Eric Barbier from the noir novel Plender by the late British crime writer Ted Lewis, The Serpent is a solid suspense movie boasting a number of well-executed set-pieces (the best of which involves the desperate Mandel’s vertiginous flight from a scaffold-enshrouded courthouse). The enjoyably twisty plot resolves itself a little early on, however, and after a major revelation the film settles into a somewhat by-the-numbers race against time to save Mandel’s family from the wicked Plender. (Miles Fielder)

Cameo, 623 8030, 23 Aug, 9.35pm; Filmhouse, 623 8030, 25 Aug, 7pm, both £7.95 (£5.50).

More: Clovis Cornillac, Edinburgh Festivals, Eric Barbier, Film Festival, Olga Kurylenko, The Serpent, Yvan Attal, Foreign (Film)