Slicing Paris in half, the river Seine flows through the heart of French identity, past the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Académie Française, the centuries-old institution of letters that guards against the bastardization of the French language, leading a valiant resistance to American cultural expansion. In these sacrosanct waters and adjoining catacombs, director and co-writer has let loose a monster shark, a mutated, self-replicating, mostly CGI descendant of that ultimate symbol of the statesidesummer blockbuster. But to hear the Gallic helmer tell it, the Netflix film is far from a capitulation to Hollywood but in fact a sly act of cinematic subversion.
A veteran of U.S. films like 2007’s , Gens appropriated genre conventions only to undercut them with a twist of French nihilism.
As the predator turns a swimming event into an all-you-can-eat buffet (as if athletes scheduled to race in the Seine at this summer’s Olympics didn’t have enough to worry about), the City of Light floods, and countless dorsal fins circle our stranded heroes in a haunting, hopeless final image. (One assumes the beasts devour them, then floss with the velvet ropes around the Mona Lisa.) The preposterous premise does not seem to have turned off audiences.
has been the number one film on Netflix charts for two weeks straight, racking up more than 70 million views since its June 5 debut. Gens says the movie has become the most watched French film of all time �.
