Staying Vertical
Country: France, Language: French, 100 mins
Original Title
Rester Vertical- Director: Alain Guiraudie
- Writer: Alain Guiraudie
- Producer: Remi Burah; Sylvie Pialat
CGiii Comment
What a steaming load of boring bollocks...
Every scene is too long, most scenes are completely unnecessary...take out all the driving shots and the running-time would be [mercifully] cut. Do the same with the landscape shots, the sheep, the birth, the baby crying, all the nudity, the night-shots, the nonsense...and you would be left with absolutely nothing!
Damien Bonnard has got to be one of the most awkward looking actors in screen history, he never looks comfortable...well, with this script, he might have a perfectly acceptable excuse.
His would-be, Shrek-look-alike, father-in-law uses his grandson as wolf-bait and then makes a pass at his would-be son-in-law...you couldn't make this stuff up...it's a pity that Guiraudie did! Hold on...it gets a whole lot worse, there's euthanasia with a bit of sodomy thrown in...to make the last gasp a little more pleasurable!
Now, with all this debauchery and depravity...you would be forgiven in thinking that this film has something to it...surely, it can't be that boring...well, it is! Monsieur Guiraudie has absolutely no story-telling talent whatsoever...he may regard himself as a provocateur...but, provocation needs potency...this film is more limp than severe erectile dysfunction.
An odious, waste of [valuable] time.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) again rejects a heteronormative worldview in this provocative and offbeat almost-fairy tale about a sexually fluid would-be screenwriter, Léo (Damien Bonnard), who, after fathering a child with a shepherdess, finds himself raising the baby alone in a region of the French countryside populated by foul-mouthed farmers and dangerous wolves…
Cast & Characters
Laure Calamy;
India Hair;
Christian Bouillette;
Damien Bonnard;
Raphael Thierry