OK, so I watched it:
À l'intérieur/Inside
The film did not take the angle I thought it would, being a straight on horror flick rather than a crime/horror film investigating the rare but real crime of Foetal Theft. I say "straight on" horror film, but it isn't so simple. It is quite arty in its intents and quests to rise above the usual stalk'n'slash gorefest which it at first resembles.
[spoiler] It starts very much laden with the influence of David Cronenberg, in my opinion, both visually and thematically: washed out colours, steely blues and greys, autumnal shadows, fear of the flesh and changes of the body through either injury or pregnancy and so on. However, this all turns about as The Maniac gets in the house. The film then becomes a very harsh exercise in claustrophobic horror - the small house offering little in the way of refuge or safety mirroring the (on-screen) trials of the foetus in its by now cramped uterine home being bashed about by injury and rapid movement. This works very effectively, in my opinion, and you spend the last hour or so of the film longing for space and the ability to take a deep breath! It's been a while since I saw a horror film so efficiently depict spatial constraint in this way.
Beatrice Dalle is quite superb as The Maniac - a wronged woman driven insane by the loss of her strived for baby. Hers is a performance of cold malice and laothing, yet with some vulnerability and pain evident. One of the best performances as The Psycho in a slasher filme, well, ever!
The film is mostly relentless in its pacing, but does feel a little stretched and overlong. The idea would have been an explosive hour but even 80 minutes feels too much. You can't help but think that towards the end it starts repeating itself or is unnecessarily pponderous in its camera moves just to stretch it all out to feature length. This is not a major problem, but it's one that struck me.
I found À l'intérieur to be a powerful film, and it is one I am glad to have finally seen. In regards its place amongst the so-called "New French Horroer" or whatever, I would rate it as one of the best. Martyrs still edges it on account of its almost surreal aspects of cosmic horror, but I'd hold À l'intérieur up as a pretty close second alongside and possibly above Haute Tension. I reckon it is going to be one of those films that haunts you long after the viewing. We shall see. [/spoiler]
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