Lights Out

Cannes (Un Certain Regard) - A discovered corpse provides the starting point for this Sonic Youth-soundtracked teen mystery. Paul Martin plays amateur sleuth.

Suburban Paris, 1992, and a teen house party is in progress; a raucous enough affair, without really threatening to rage out of control. A boy and a girl exit and wander into the forest bordering on the abode. She momentarily ducks into the dark of the undergrowth to relieve herself, only to emerge in a state of panic, having stumbled across what appears to be a dead body.

This incident is the quadrangle around which the four interweaving narratives of Lights Out are constructed. From this opening French writer-director Fabrice Gobert - making a very impressive feature debut here - reels back ten days previously, offering a quartet of differing perspectives on the period leading up to that grim discovery in the woods.

These varying viewpoints belong to Jérémie (Jules Pelissier), handsome star of the school soccer team, his propensity for on-field temper tantrums earning him the nickname Hulk; Alice (Ana Giradot), the prettiest and smartest girl in class, whose boyfriend, Simon Werner ( Laurent Delbeque), goes mysteriously missing (continuing the Cannes 2010 trend of evocative native titles being subbed for tepidly flat English-language alternatives, Lights Out is known as Simon Werner a Disparu... in France); Jean-Baptiste Rabier (Arthur Mazet), teacher's son and social misfit, truly tragic with his gruesome oversized jumpers and ironclad side-parting; and finally, Simon Werner himself, the boy whose vanishing begets the whirlwind of rumours that sweep through the school in his absence.

One of the final films at Cannes 2010, Lights Out proved to be one of the most straightforwardly satisfying of the 23 I watched throughout the festival fortnight. It is a conventional affair in the sense that the litany of story riddles are ultimately resolved, and conventional too in its cast of good-looking young performers, all of whom perform ably (incidentally, a possible alternative income-route beckons for Arthur Mazet as an uncanny Tobey Maguire-alike). Which is not to say that a great deal of intelligence hasn't gone into the construction of Gobert's movie, with the audience being called upon to pay close attention – something which, as it happens, is easily done given that the unfolding scenario is such an engrossing one.

Seemingly small mysteries are alighted upon, the import attached to them swelling through each repetition, to the point where their solution seems exasperatingly urgent. Why does Jérémie lose his rag so spectacularly at football? Is Rabier ogling Alice, as he is accused? Why does Simon hand an envelope to Yves (Laurent Capelluto), the soccer coach? Lights Out emphasises the huge array of interpretations that can be placed on an incident, the same moment being painted as wholly innocuous or seismically significant, dependent on outlook.

This is a film very much shot from a youthful perspective with one key aspect being the power of rumour and speculation amongst the ensemble of teenage characters. Their world is dominated by their interactions with each other, there being a chilly disconnect from the film's adult figures, clouds of suspicion loitering over the heads of several of them, namely Yves, and Rabier and Alice's fathers. Director Gobert makes the audience complicit in the air of fevered gossip, daring them to employ their pre-existing knowledge of teen drama/slasher movie clichés to formulate their own story theories as outlandish as those fashioned by the excitable young protagonists.

The sense of jeunesse extends to the visual and aural accoutrements of Lights Out. Plenty of attention has already been paid to the fact that Sonic Youth have composed the music and theirs proves to be a tensely atmopsheric score – though any fear that the alt-rock heroes have gone all John Williams on us can be banished now, as they have eschewed the opportunity to deliver a sweeping cinematic orchestration in favour of retaining their trademark thudding drums and screeching guitars. The film as a whole exudes a pleasing retro-cool, from the deployment of Killing Joke's Love Like Blood in that pivotal party scene, to the old school fixtures and fashions, such as Simon's Super Nintendo and the fine, fine parade of denim jackets.

Amidst all this sterling work, there are a few blunders. There is a clunky conversation between Alice and best friend Clara about Schopenhauer which comes over as if Gobert is trying to draw his own explicit artistic allusions - never an endearing habit in a director. Sections of Rabier's story are slightly contrived as he blunders in on crucial plot-explaining dramas on improbably numerous occasions. And the epilogue is a completely superfluous bit of a fluff. The movie has resolved itself perfectly by then, meaning the scene comes over as the stereotypical Hollywood ending, merely designed to impart some final, hollow 'feel-good' vibes. These few flaws however do little to dent the overall merit of what is a hugely gripping drama.

Rating on a scale of 5 broken lightbulbs: 4.5

Release Date: TBC
Directed by: Fabrice Gobert
Screenplay by: Fabrice Gobert
Starring: Jules Pelissier, Ana Giradot, Arthur Mazet, Laurent Delbeque
Cert: TBC
Running time: 91 minutes