Director/Writer: Antonio Campo | Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Lila Salet, Michael Abiteboul, Solo, Constance Rousseau | 105min US Psychological thriller
Simon Killer, is a subversive second feature by Antonio Campos: you get the overriding impression that it’s being filmed covertly or by a hidden camera possibly due to the slightly muffled sound effects and a close range hand-help camera that give this psychological thriller an unsettling feeling of doom-laden urgency with its a syncopated score occasionally and abruptly punctured by long periods of uncomfortable silence.
Simon is clearly a disturbed, self-absorbed and morose individual: an American who’s moved to Paris and has just finished a long term love affair brought on by his ex girlfriend’s infidelity, and this plays on his mind.
Sexually he’s also very pent-up and troubled by the past and this comes across in his relationships with the people he comes across in this foreign city.
Paris feels like a dangerous place. Not the romantic city of dreams always billed – but a hostile, jagged and unfriendly place harbouring criminal types and the disenfranchised.
Simon eventually hooks up with a mysterious French call girl who offers him casual sex, and the two become close when Simon asks her for temporary refuge. He becomes increasingly emotionally and sexually involved with in scenes that feel authentic and visceral.The camera plays on their torsos and occasionally scans across the room in an unnerving way. The two engage in experimental and brutal sex that’s explicit and intermingled with feelings from the past for Simon, as he begins a slow and disturbing downwoods spiralling into his fate.
This is a first rate mesmerizing psychological thriller that’s stylishly produced and pulsating with believable performances from the writer and director of the acclaimed Afterschool.MT
SIMON is now on NETFLIX .