By: debbie lynn elias
Psychosexual, erotically charged, unsavory, seedy yet visually beautiful and intriguingly conceptual, all describe writer/director Antonio Campos’ SIMON KILLER. With trace elements of noted French crime novelist George Simenon and shades of Patricia Highsmith’s deceptive pathological liar Tom Ripley, Campos, together with co-writer and lead actor, Brady Corbet, delve into the world of Simon, a man who stands on the ledge of truth and reality; but whose reality? SIMON KILLER is designed with a fascinating story structure that spins its web by declining into the bowels of darkness within Simon’s mind.
We meet Simon in Paris. Apparently taking a break after graduate school, not to mention getting unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend of five years, Simon wants “time” to clear his head, figure out his life before assuming adult responsibilities like work, paying student loans, applying all that learned knowledge about the connection between peripheral vision and the brain to something useful. But there’s something about Simon himself that doesn’t seem to mesh with the intellectualism and education he purports to have. Wandering the streets of Paris at night, he follows pretty girls and tries to impress them with bad French, only to go home alone and engage in self-gratifying online porn; that is until he is lured into a fancy brothel and meets Victoria. Herself needing money and Simon needing companionship – and as we quickly learn – rather violent sex, their relationship moves beyond the brothel and into “real life”. But then tables turn that the audience sees but of which Victoria, whose real name is Noura, remains in the dark.
Campos and Corbet are masterful at manipulation. Capitalizing on moral ambivalence, violence and manipulation of the mind through imagery, they collaboratively create a world that forces one to read between the lines, allowing each person to see what they want to see.
The character construction of Simon is compelling. He is at first charming, perhaps a bit wounded and lost, but he sounds intelligent. We have no reason to doubt him but by the time the story arrives at a Skype call with mom, we know something is amiss with Simon as he goes into the clenching, rocking and hmmmmming hold-my-breath-till-my-face-turns-red sound….and he does it away from the camera on the laptop so Mom can’t see him. Corbet shines in this moment walking the delicate line of sanity. And then the false persona really starts to fall away and the light bulb goes off.
Narrative fuels the action by way of Simon’s voice-over emails to his ex, Michelle, which is then complimented by the inter-personal connection with Mati Diop’s Victoria/Noura. Once these characters connect, Simon’s darkness shines through in spades and not only through his roughness and crude impersonal nature of sex itself, but with his stories and rantings. Even more telling are some self-inflicted “injuries” which lead to more intense lies and blackmail. As the film progresses and Simon gets hungry, greedy and even lustful for money, sex, control, we are privy to a calculated ascension into hell. The line between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, disintegrates and becomes indistinguishable.
Visually, SIMON KILLER is mesmerizing. Joe Anderson’s cinematography stuns, metaphorically capturing Simon’s mental decline through use of filters, blurring, skewed angles and vivid use of color, particularly red – pulsing, pounding, blood Anderson really pulls in the best of his depth of experience to elevate and accentuate the tonal bandwidth of the film as a whole, both integrating and playing against the grain of the bubbling psychosis of Simon. Slow pans bode well for allowing the mind’s eye to absorb what’s unfolding, letting the audience “read between the lines” searching for the truth amidst Simon’s manipulations and machinations and/or seeing what they want to see and believe. Skewed framing of doorways, the lines of cobblestoned streets glistening under pools of water and red neon lights lead the mind to question and ponder, “What’s hiding?” Masterful manipulation of the mind through images.
The film rises and falls, however, on Brady Corbet’s performance. Wickedly good. Infantile, innocent and maniacal all at the same time. A master at emotional obfuscation. However, he gets annoying with the character’s outbursts. Hand in hand with Corbet is Mati Diop who gives Victoria/Noura a vulnerability to an otherwise hard pragmatic edge.
Nice design touch is Simon always wearing a little gold fox stick pin. Fox in the hen house, sly as a fox. Yep. A perfectly telling subtle addition.
Original music and techno-rock soundtrack by Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans is pulsatingly seductive, serving as a complement more to the visuals than to the individual characters or story.
SIMON KILLER is a psychiatrist’s playground – moral ambivalence, violence, pathological liar, violent sex, and at the same time, seeming like a lost little boy pulling every stunt in the book to get attention. Simon is manipulative evil.
Directed by Antonio Campos
Written by Antonio Campos, Brady Corbet, Mati Diop
Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop
