Who payed the critics

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Whilst being in the midst of watching 100 French films over 100 days I have been in the mood of seeing a Giallo related movie.Being a fan of the actress from the ultra-stylish gialli Four Flies on Grey Velvet and the utterly bonkers The Black Cat,I was delighted to spot Giallo star Mimsy Farmer in a gritty French movie,which led to me getting ready to go on the hunt.The plot:Meeting up in the woods,a group of 7 men get set to go hunting for pigs in the woods.Missing her train, Helen Wells looks for a place to stay.Whilst walking round in the woods,Wells is spotted by some of the men,who corner Wells and rape her.Throwing Wells to the side like trash,one of the men discovers that he dropped his gun at the scene.Returning to get the gun,the gang soon discover that Wells has made the hunters become the hunted.View on the film:Although the audio sounds like its been smacked on a cheese grater,the dialogue in co-writer/(along with André G. Brunelin) director Serge Leroy's screenplay is still able to give the viewer a good,nasty jab,due to the confrontation manner that the guys talk about Wells revealing all of them as upper-crust dogs.Bringing the rape/revenge "Horror" genre to the middle class,the writers attack the bourgeoisie with an unrelenting ruthlessness,by making each of the gang members suffocate their disguise of the rape,so that their image of being "trusted" members of the elite can be kept as a mask.Largely shot in the outdoors,director Leroy & cinematographer Claude Renoir capture the rugged terrain in grainy,sawn-off tracking shots which wraps the title in a thrilling uneasy atmosphere,as Wells tries to outmatch the hunters.Joined by the excellent,mean spirited gang whose members include Michael Lonsdale and Jean-Pierre Marielle, Mimsy Farmer gives a fantastic,subtle performance as Wells,thanks to Farmer revealing Wells quick-wits by peeling away her timed skin,as Wells goes on the hunt for the hunters.

Hugely effective and robust French hybrid of 'The Most Dangerous Game', seasoned with a soupcon of 'Straw Dog's. The blistering and uncompromising 'La Traque' includes a bravura cast of notable French character actors, with an especially sympathetic portrayal of the victim by personal favorite Mimsy Farmer. Serge Leroy keeps the tension ratchet-tight, and unlike many other similarly lurid thrillers of that most exploitative epoch he also pays a great deal of attention to the merits of solid characterization. 'La Traque' is Quite a special film indeed and its cracking Giallo-esque score by Giancarlo Chiaramello should be appealing to most euro-cult soundtrack obsessives; one must also mention the brilliant and evocative photography of one Claude Renoir. (The use of hand-held camera's in the forest chase being particularly striking) Yet another exemplar from the heady 70's that remains unjustifiably obscure)

A group of friends meet to hunt boar in the woods. They encounter a young woman and one of them rapes her. The others decide to do whatever it takes to conceal the crime.There are two hunts going on here. There are the "respectable men" hunting down a defenceless young woman. And then there is director Serge Leroy hunting down the aforementioned respectables to expose the amoral logic and cold-blooded brutality underpinning their social position.The simple story is told with great skill. The tension builds grimly as each man acquiesces to the crime that's unfolding and we realise there's less and less hope for the unfortunate girl. Along the way, we learn more about the hunters: how one of them accidentally killed before and concealed it to avoid a scandal; how another had to pursue and kill a traitor (a woman) in the Resistance. Another is a politician with much to lose if the woman talks; another is an ex-army captain, trained to kill; another is simply a coward. The girl, meanwhile, remains largely unknown to us, as defenceless and pathetic as the animals they casually slaughter.There have been innumerable horror films in which faceless psychopaths pursue women to their deaths. What makes "La Traque" all the more unnerving is that the faces of these hunters are all too familiar. They are the faces of politicians, landowners, war heroes, pillars of the Establishment (and Leroy carefully chooses actors who have played such respectable types in other films). Their actions derive not from a loss of control, but from an excess of it: these are men who have learnt to suppress human compassion when necessary to achieve their goals in life. And murder is the logical consequence of that.Part of the discomfort of watching this film is the sensation of being asked, "Would your friends and neighbours act differently under the same circumstances? Would you?"

The plot is very simple: among a small group of hunters, a pair of brothers coincidentally meet a young women deep in the woods and rape her. A chain of events will lead the whole group to side against the victim and hunt her down to silence her.The movie does shine even at this first level of narration. The hunting is brilliantly filmed, the tension builds up as members of the hunting party ensnare themselves in a spiral of violence and inhumanity.However, I found the second level even more interesting. It manages to etch a kind of clinical still image of a certain rural upper class. Each member is an icon of a social status and human behavior: the gross local industrial manager, greedy rural landlord, retired army captain with a warped sense of comradeship acquired during the war in Algeria, ambitious young local politician willing to sacrifice a human being for the sake of his reputation...The straightforward, brutal plot allows to picture the subtle, convoluted mechanisms of collusion between all these icons of local power: money, influence, love affairs and class solidarity to evade the consequences of various breaches of the common law.The brilliant cast manages to flesh out these individuals vividly but not without subtlety. Although the clothes, haircuts or cars look dated now, the timeless theme of this movie has not aged a day after thirty years.