Slowbuilding start without proper end
The dramatic strategy of the FrenchGerman film “Three Peaks” is to start slowly, very slowly, and gradually build in tension toward an overwhelming climax. But the movie delivers on only half of its promise. It’s very slow, but the climax, when it does arrive, is weak. Even worse — and this is almost amazing — the ending is ambiguous.
The great French director Jean Renoir once said, “Everybody has their reasons,” and that expansive, allencompassing view of life is ideal if you’re making humane character portraits and slices of life, like Renoir. But if you’re making a thriller, that view won’t cut it, because thrillers absolutely depend on a clearcut understanding of who and what are right or wrong.
Thus, in “Three Peaks” we get an intelligent and intentional mix of two kinds of stories that have no business being combined, a sensitive domestic drama crossed with elements from “The Bad Seed.” Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”) is a French woman who has been dating a German man, Aaron (Alexander Fehling), for two years. She has an 8yearold son, Tristan (Arian Montgomery), and though Tristan is rather quiet about it, he doesn’t seem all that crazy about the boyfriend.
The complication of this setup is nicely conveyed by the language. Mom likes to speak French to her son, but he has stopped speaking French in response. She speaks German to the boyfriend, but sometimes slips into English. And apparently the first husband, George, is Englishspeaking. So the bad news for Tristan is that he is from a broken home and doesn’t like his future stepfather. But the good news is that he’s growing up trilingual.
The double impulse at the heart of “Three Peaks” is ultimately selfdefeating. Director Jan Zabeil wants to make a serious domestic drama that takes in the feelings of all characters with a deep and sensitive understanding. But he also wants to make a movie in which a little boy starts doing sneaky, destructive things in order to undermine (and even physically endanger) Mom’s boyfriend. To abandon ourselves to the thriller aspect, we must see the little boy as the villain. But Zabeil doesn’t want to go that far, so he ends up with half gestures.
The best guess is that Zabeil intends that we should feel for all the characters and appreciate the film beyond the thriller aspect. But if he really wanted to make a sensitive story about the stresses leading up to a possible second marriage, he should not have adopted a classic suspense structure in which one character engages in a malign plan to undermine another character.
Viewers aren’t stupid to expect certain things, having been cued to expect them for half the movie. Nor should viewers be regarded as ungrateful or lowbrow for not liking the lukewarm stew they’re offered in its place. If Zabeil didn’t want to deliver a formula picture, he needed to come up with something better than the formula.