Truff (2008)

Directed by: Kim Nguyen | 75 minutes | drama, horror, comedy, science fiction | Actors: Céline Bonnier, Roy Dupuis, Pierre Lebeau, Danielle Proulx, Jean-Nicolas Verreault, Michèle Richard, Karim Bourara, Jean-Robert Bourdage, Jean Lapointe

‘Truffe’ is actually a film about two lovers who struggle to make ends meet, but nevertheless persevere on character and love power. The things that happen are a test that will either make their love stronger or destroy it. It is also an indictment of the mind-numbing influence of consumptive thinking in modern consumer society, in which all love and creativity is lost through mass production in factories that mainly deal with ‘quotas’. The whole is cast in a science fiction jacket with (alien?) monsters and some black humor.

Nice black and white shot too, nice main characters, who can also act and a nice build-up in the beginning. Until the first fur collars appear on the scene. These turn out to be small monsters that look like large furry caterpillars, with a small mouth with sharp teeth. The viewer is confronted with a question, which is: should this be scary or fun? It’s neither, unfortunately. The monsters are too fake to be taken seriously and the movie is too serious to be really funny. And so the monsters, in addition to a number of characters, also mainly kill the power of the film.

It is a mystery why screenwriter/director Kim Nguyen chose this form. If only the film had become a kind of ‘Delicatessen’ (1991), it has that kind of atmosphere in the beginning, especially when the parents are introduced, in a dryly comical, strong scene. All the fuss about the truffles up to that point is also interesting and entertaining and in a pleasant way vague. Because you can’t really figure out why those truffles are so special and yet everyone goes for it. It feels a bit alienating, but that’s strong, because it covers the absurdist charge. That absurdity is also reflected in design, such as those large refrigerators that truffle representatives have to lug around. Fine. Yet that vagueness is going to be disturbing and that is again because of those monsters. Because it remains unclear whether they mean funny sentence or not. It is not clear where they come from and why they are here. They turn out to be classic parasites and have even created a few humanoid androids to control them, but also turn out to be controlled by something themselves, but who or what remains in the middle.

Many lines are drawn, which are not clearly worked out or completed. There is also a little too little time, 75 minutes but, really too short, if Nguyen didn’t know any more. As mentioned, the film opens strongly, where the choice for black and white works out well for the atmosphere. The fact that the film derails is therefore due to a script that is too poorly developed, in which form and content are not in balance, do not reinforce each other, but undermine each other. The biggest culprits in this are those stupid little monsters, who are not funny and too fake to impress in any other way. It may have been the makers to send a critical message to society, but you have to package it better. Because in this way you will eventually miss your goal.