Maléfique (2002)

Director:

Eric Valette

Writers:

Alexandre Charlot (scenario) and
Franck Magnier (scenario) ...
(more)

Release Date:

7 May 2003 (France)

Genre:

Fantasy | Horror | Mystery

Tagline:

En sortirez-vous vivant?

Plot:

In a penitentiary, four prisoners occupy a cell: Carrère, who used his company to commit a fraud and...

Plot Keywords:

French Horror

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Gérald Laroche	...	Carrère
Philippe Laudenbach	...	Lassalle
Clovis Cornillac	...	Marcus
Dimitri Rataud	...	Pâquerette
Didier Bénureau	...	Hippolyte Picus
Félicia Massoni	...	Claire Carrère
Geoffrey Carey	...	Charles Danvers
Paul-Alexandre Bardela	...	Hugo Carrère
Boris Lutz	...	Danvers jeune
Nelson Jourdan	...	Danvers enfant
César Castagné-Favali	...	Danvers bébé
Yves Arnault	...	Le Directeur
Benjamin Haddad	...	Le Gardien de Prison 1
Thierry Cazal	...	Le Gardien de Prison 2
Olivier Bouana	...	Le Gardien de Prison 3
Pascal André	...	Le Taulard 1
Tayeb-Akim Boudina	...	Le Taulard 2
Jean-Marc Capo	...	Le Maton
Yasmina Zekkour-Ferhat	...	La visiteuse
Alain Bouzigues

Directed by
Eric Valette

Writing credits
Alexandre Charlot		(scenario) and
Franck Magnier		(scenario)
François Cognard		(idea)

Produced by
Olivier Delbosc	....	producer
Marc Missonnier	....	producer
Franck Ribière	....	associate producer

Original Music by
Eric Sampieri		(as Éric Sampieri)

Cinematography by
Jean-Marc Bouzou

Film Editing by
Luc Golfin

Casting by
Emma Skowronek

Production Design by
Olivier Raoux

Costume Design by
Anouschka Debain-Dussaucy		(as Anoushka)

Makeup Department
Mélanie Gerbeaux	....	special makeup effects artist
Sébastien Imart	....	special makeup effects artist
Annabelle Petit	....	special makeup effects artist
Michel Vautier	....	key hair stylist
Michel Vautier	....	key makeup artist

Production Management
Stéphane Bouchard	....	unit manager
Ludovic Naar	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Frédéric Vignal	....	first assistant director

Art Department
Jeanne dit Fouque Damien	....	graphic designer

Sound Department
Philippe Amouroux	....	sound re-recording mixer
Charles Autrand	....	dialogue editor
Edouard d'Heucqueville	....	sound mix technician
Jean De Sagey	....	foley recordist
Cyril Holtz	....	sound re-recording mixer
Cyril Moisson	....	sound
Pascal Villard	....	supervising sound editor

Special Effects by
Guillaume Castagné	....	special effects supervisor
Nicolas Darrot	....	special effects technician
Pierre-Paul Jayne	....	special effects technician
Jacques-Olivier Molon	....	assistant special effects
Perrine Poirier	....	special effects technician
Antoine Rivière	....	special effects supervisor
Jean-Claude Schifrine	....	special effects supervisor

Visual Effects by
Matthieu Chatelier	....	digital artist

Camera and Electrical Department
Kareem La Vaullée	....	Steadicam operator
Yvan Quehec	....	gaffer
Giovanni Quéné	....	key grip

Editorial Department
Christophe Lucotte	....	color timer
Pauline Pallier	....	assistant editor

Other crew
Christelle Brieussel	....	development: Canal+ Ecriture
François Cognard	....	development: Canal+ Ecriture
Yvan Gauthier	....	making-of team
Eric Jehelmann	....	development: B Movie
Sabine Raymond	....	script supervisor
Sophie Timbal	....	production accountant
Manuel Yvernault	....	production assistant

Production Companies

• Bee Movies (presented by)
• Fidélité Productions
• Film Office (as Film Office Editions)
• Mars Distribution
• Canal+ (participation)
• Canal Plus Ecriture (participation) (as Canal+ Ecriture)
• Gimages 5 (in association with)

Distributors

• Mars Distribution (2002) (worldwide) (all media)
• Central Partnership (Russia)
• Kinowelt Home Entertainment (Germany)
• Revolver Entertainment (2002) (UK) (all media)
• Siren Visual Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (DVD)
• Versus Entertainment (2005) (Spain) (all media)

Also Known As:

Runtime:

France:90 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

UK:18 | Portugal:M/16 | France:-12 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | Germany:16 | Australia:MA

Company:

Bee Movies

Trivia:

During the preproduction, a producer, thinking books were outdated, asked to replace the black magic book found by prisoners by an e-book.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Viande d'origine française (2009) (TV)

Recommended to curio hunters and "pure" horror fans, delivers on its promise to be "malefic"

Maléfique is a very interesting movie. It is an unholy alloy of triumphs and failures. The central concept is great, three inmates with bizarre personalities are joined by a fourth (who the audience identify with) and they try to escape from their cell using a book of magic that they find within the walls of the cell.

The atmosphere is well-woven, it reminds me of reading about the prison stay of Edmond Dantes' in the Château d'If (prior to becoming the Count of Monte Cristo). The director sets up the feeling that the characters are tied to the cell, particularly the character we are meant to identify with (Carrère - a white-collar criminal whose crime is not specified, but it's obliquely suggested might be fraud). On one occasion Carrère dithers when leaving the cell for exercise and has the cell door shut on him; we never leave the cell, the claustrophobia is unbroken. There are also no shots of the prison outside the cell, and the view through the bars is a longing sunset over a generic prison wall. So even though the film appears to be very modern, it has a very old world feel of incarceration.

The characters are intriguing. We have Marcus, a violent pre-op transsexual who plays an abusive mother to Pâquerette (French for Daisy) a heavily retarded young man. Pâquerette likes to eat everything he finds beautiful, and unfortunately this included his baby sister, hence his current predicament (I like this comment on internalisation, very primitive). Lasalle is a withdrawn, possessed elderly man, in for brutally murdering his wife.

The central message of the movie is that your desires will annihilate you, and there's a ritual that goes with that. I think that's what disturbs me the most, seeing people destroying themselves ritualistically. It has a real life ring to it. The quite simple soundtrack backs this up well, every step deeper into the quicksand is accompanied by the dull ringing of a gong. I'm actually hearing the gong now every time I do something self-destructive.

I think one of the plot problems is that the ends of the characters don't really reinforce the message consistently, particularly with Carrère, also the concept of the book seems to alter throughout the film, not in terms of a successive revelation either. I also think that some of the images we see are a bit amateurish, more by design than execution, such as the famous "vagina eye", and the sodomy of Lasalle, for me, totally hollow images.

At the end the movie it feels like the director is in a rush to get it over with, and some things don't seem logical, for example we've been clumsily led to believe different things about Carrère's child. This doesn't change the fact though that what we have here is that rare bird, a "pure" horror movie. There is no comedic dross or genre segueing, like Cube (1997/Natali), the obvious movie to compare it to, it's a total immersion experience, where you feel as if you are in the cell with the characters. This last comment I make about it being a "pure" experience I think is something others have mentioned as well so that is a fairly unanimous point.

On a personal note my favourite part of the film is when Lasalle talks about his past as a librarian. He very vividly describes a scene where he goes to work one day and sits down in his usual place in the centre of a room where all the books are arranged in a circle around him. The books seem to be chanting to him that he will never contain their knowledge. This prompts Lasalle to go insane. That really is the problem with an obsession with understanding and knowledge. It's something I myself have felt.

One final comment is that two of the quite well-received comments on the board have confused the characters' names. To convince yourself that Lasalle is the older librarian character, simply click on Philippe Laudenbach's page and you will see he was born in 1936.