The International Writers Magazine: Review

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Man Bites Dog (C'est Arrivé Près de Chez Vous) 1992 Directed by Remy Belvaux Starring Benoit Poelvoorde and Remy Belvaux • Paul Rumble Benoit is well-spoken, well-dressed, often witty and loves to quote poetry. He also likes to kill people. He regards this as a sort of pseudo-job, as he makes his living from the money he finds in the homes of his victims. Benoit also acts as an affable narrator, as his exploits are being filmed for a documentary. There’s Remy, the director, and sparsely seen cameraman André. There is also a running Spinal Tap-esque joke throughout the film, as the crew work their way steadily through a number of soundmen. Yes, I did talk about both serial killers and jokes in the same paragraph and that’s because Man Bites Dog is a true ‘black comedy’. A lot of the humour comes from Benoits’s narration and pondering on a variety of subjects, including food, art and the best way to dispose of bodies. Of course this humour is counterbalanced by a bit of the old ultra violence. The laughs always feel guilty, as if you’re revelling in the violence itself. However, you’re constantly seduced by the easygoing, amusing Benoit. And that is the film’s masterstroke.

A lot of the humour comes from Benoits’s narration and pondering on a variety of subjects, including food, art and the best way to dispose of bodies. Of course this humour is counterbalanced by a bit of the old ultra violence. The laughs always feel guilty, as if you’re revelling in the violence itself. However, you’re constantly seduced by the easygoing, amusing Benoit. And that is the film’s masterstroke.

The film is a very strong satire, which works on several levels. The first would be the contrast of humour and violence. Your own guilt, at laughing at the dark humour in some ways condemns you for complacency towards the violence that is happening onscreen. The film aims to shake the bourgeois to the very core. It’s also a frightening prediction of modern society’s obsession with reality television. Man Bites Dog suggests a type of extreme underground reality show.

It is shot in a Cinéma-vérité style, black and white throughout, no musical soundtrack and with very naturalistic camerawork. At points, it almost seems like a real documentary. The whole film lampoons television shows that make icons out of people who have no discernible reason to be stars. When the film was made, there wasn’t much evidence of this, but you only have to look at the success of ex-Big Brother contestants to see that there is apparently some demand for the lives of these people to be documented.

Not only does Man Bites Dog condemn its audience, it also condemns the media’s sensationalism and glamourisation of violence in a way also attempted in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and Wes Craven’s Scream series. However, this film surpasses both of those due to the scenes where we gradually see the film crew get involved with Benoit’s exploits. At first they are tentative; Remy helps to load bodies into a car, but eventually, in a pivotal scene reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange the entire crew joins Benoit in the rape of a young woman as her husband stares on powerless. The effect is to unnerve the viewer but also to make them question just how involved the media should get with the particular subject by taking it to a disturbing extreme.

By all accounts, this film should be a hard, visually punishing slog. But due to the exceedingly well acted main character of Benoit, we are unable to tear ourselves away. He is a very Hitchcockian villain, in the vein of Anthony Hopkins in Psycho. He is watchable for his unpredictability, bouncing from playing the piano to throwing bodies into a quarry. He is witty with his observations, a quick thinker. His life appears to have almost instant gratification.

Man Bites Dog is a terrifying film, because despite the horrific violence frequently dispensed by Benoit, we continue to watch because of the way his personality welcomes us in. It exposes our hypocrisies as we observe a character that has absolutely no right to be an icon, elevated to one, and then become unable to tear ourselves away from his life.

© Paul Rumble November 2007
shl60629 at port.ac.uk

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