The unheralded treat of the year has arrived in the form of Xavier Gens’ Under Paris, which is all the more surprising because it is one of your actual Netflix Original movies. As we have sort of discussed before, the majority of Netflix Original movies are not designed to be any good (apart from the one or two prestige productions they crank out around Christmas every year, which are solely intended to get award nominations); they aren’t even really meant to be watched all the way through in some cases – they’re just meant look attractive and comfortingly familiar enough to lure you into watching the first five minutes, or however long the company has decided counts as a ‘view’ these days. (This is how rubbish like Atlas and Rebel Moon reliably rack up millions upon millions of viewers, supposedly.) Under Paris is not that sort of Netflix Original.
It doesn’t actually start in Paris, but in the North Pacific, where marine biologist Berenice Bejo, who used to be a serious actress, and her team are investigating the effects of pollution on the local sea life – particularly a shark they have nicknamed Lilith. Lilith the shark has been getting unexpectedly big unexpectedly quickly, so of course the team do the obvious thing and jump into the eerie, plastic-strewn water so they can stick something sharp into the shark and take a tissue sample. It turns out that giant sharks don’t like being jabbed with sharp things any more than you or I and proceeds to eat the team. She has a go at eating Bejo, too, when she goes to help, but the protagonist never dies in the pre-credits sequence even in French films.
Well, three years later and Bejo is back in Paris doing her bit to save the environment from pollution and all the usual stuff. All around her Parisian folk are doing their thing, including a couple of lads who are fising in the Seine. ‘I think I’ve caught something!’ cries one of them in a subtle bit of foreshadowing. Then Mika (Lea Leviant), a young Gretel Thunderbird type, approaches her with some interesting news. The local environmental activists have been monitoring the tracker tag on Lilith the shark to see where she’s got to – and it turns out she’s in Paris too!
Now, you may be saying that Paris is about 230 miles from the coast by river, that sharks (giant or not) are saltwater animals and wouldn’t survive in the Seine, and that the river itself is not navigable by large animals without their being noticed, and, furthermore, that the makers of Under Paris had better have some pretty damn good answers to all of these questions. Well, let me assure you that all these points have been considered by the writing team and they are indeed answered. The answers, in no particular order, are ‘pollution is to blame’ and ‘sshhhh, don’t be awkward’.
To be fair, they never really explain why Lilith the shark has gone halfway round the world to swim around in the city where Bejo now lives, but it does add immeasurably to the Jaws: The Revenge vibe the film has certainly acquired by this point (Machoires la Vengeance does have a certain ring to it, too). The thing about Jaws: The Revenge is that it’s a great example of how a film with a silly but not unpromising premise can be irretrievably torpedoed if the makers don’t have the guts to really engage with their own story. This is not a mistake you can accuse the makers of Under Paris of making. Having decided to make a film about giant mutant sharks terrorising Paris (or at least those bits of it closest to the river), they really go for it with no trace of embarrassment.
Yes, the premise is irretrievable nonsense, but the actual superstructure of plot and genre convention they surround it with is reassuringly serviceable and hangs together very nicely, albeit in an extremely hackneyed way – Bejo initially has a hard time convincing a hunky young river police sergeant (Nassim Lyes) of what’s going on, while on the fringes of the plot groups of homeless folk living by the river mysteriously vanish. Lilith the shark’s tracker conveniently switches and off whenever it suits the plot. And, naturally, all of this coincides with the Paris triathlon, when the river is teeming with thrashing French folk, and which the cartoonishly self-serving mayor (Anne Marivin) stands to do very well out of and refuses to cancel. All together now: tu vas avoir besoin d’un plus gros bateau!
And yet it’s almost impossible to shake the impression that this is somehow, on some level, entirely conscious of its own absurdity and actually playing games with the audience – that it’s entirely reasonable to engage with Under Paris as an ultra-deadpan horror-comedy that works on the level of self-parody too. There’s a whole subplot about intensely earnest young people coming together to save the environment and tackle the climate crisis, the sort of issue that a lot of big films are cashing in on at the moment, and yet Under Paris subverts this, using it to build up to the first of its properly spectacular horror sequences – and doing so knowingly and intentionally. The pacing of the film is another of its strengths, transitioning seamlessly from something relatively plausible in its opening segment to an utterly berserk and outrageous climax. Inevitably, there is a hint that there may be more to explore with this particular story, though quite how they’re going to top this one I don’t know.
You may be reading this and thinking ‘hmm, it’s La Sharknado‘ – but this doesn’t have anything like the same air of wilful stupidity about it, the sense it is revelling in its own badness. Under Paris is a ridiculous film, an absurd film, ultimately a deeply unserious film – and yet, somehow, it’s not actually a bad film. It has genuine strengths in the way it’s constructed, in its direction, effects and performances, even if you’re not inclined to treat it as a sly comedy. One way or another, this is a terrifically effective piece of entertainment.
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