I Stand Alone (1998)

A horse meat butcher's life and mind begins to breakdown as he lashes out against various factions of society while attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Director:

Gaspar Noé

Writer:

Gaspar Noé

Stars:

Philippe Nahon, Blandine Lenoir, Frankie Pain

5 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Philippe Nahon	...	Le Boucher
Blandine Lenoir	...	Sa Fille
Frankie Pain	...	Sa Maitresse (as Frankye Pain)
Martine Audrain	...	Sa Belle-Mere
Zaven	...	L'Homme a la Morale
Jean-François Rauger	...	Agent Immobilier
Guillaume Nicloux	...	Directeur du Supermarche
Olivier Doran	...	Presentateur (voice)
Aïssa Djabri	...	Docteur Choukroun (as Aissa Djabri)
Serge Faurie	...	Directeur d'Hospice
Frédéric Pfohl	...	Infirmier de Hospice (as Frederic Pfohl)
Stéphanie Sec	...	Infirmiere de Hospice (as Stephanie Sec)
Arlette Balkis	...	Femme Mourante
Gil Bertharion Jr.	...	Camionneur (as Gil Bertharion Jr)
Rado	...	Gardien de l'Hotel

Storyline

The Butcher (known from Noe's short film Carne) has done some time in jail after beating up the guy who tried to seduce his teenage mentally-handicapped daughter. Now he wants to start a new life. He leaves his daughter in an institution and moves to Lille suburbs with his mistress. She promised him a new butcher shop. She lied. The butcher decides to go back to Paris and find his daughter.

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Plot Keywords:

butcher | incest | violence | revenge | paris france | 

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Taglines:

In the bowels of France

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first-person voice-over heard throughout the film was written after principal photography was finished. Writer and director Gaspar Noé said, he was mostly drunk, when he wrote it, because he wanted to be as close as possible to the mind-set of the main character. Noé also told audiences, that the rage and frustration articulated in the voice-over was inspired by the near-poverty he experienced during the production of this self-financed debut feature.

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Goofs

The main character tells the manager of the abattoir that he is 50 years old. However, the narration at the start of the movie states that the main character was born in 1939, and the movie is set in 1980, which would make him 40 or 41 years old.

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Quotes

The Butcher: [after an unsuccessful job interview at a slaughterhouse] What? A fairy treating me like that? Tell me I'm dreaming! As if I didn't know his wife dropped him the day she caught him having his sphincter rimmed by an employee. All the horsemeat butchers in Paris know that little Mr. Blanchat likes cock. He lets his ass do the blow jobs. And who's he to be so proud? I hear his father was of the same ilk. I wonder why there are so many queers among the rich. Must be their lack of strenuous effort. ...

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Alternate Versions

To receive an 18 certificate two shots of sexual penetration during the viewing of a hardcore sex film at a cinema were blurred for the UK release. The video featured the same optically edited print.

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Connections

Referenced in Adjust Your Tracking (2013)

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Soundtracks

Paulo
Written by Casimir Zoba (uncredited)
Performed by Zao
© Productions Justement · Lido Melodies

User Reviews

Alone against everyone

Stunning. The writer-director Gaspar Noe's first-person account of a jobless butcher's trip on the down escalator has a lot of superficial resemblances to TAXI DRIVER, but the real unseen hand behind this shattering picture belongs to Louis-Ferdinand Celine, whose scabrous stream-of-consciousness monologues Noe has translated into scorching, nineties angry-white-man-ese. As the butcher's three hundred francs dwindle, and his handgun starts looking more and more appealing, Noe surgically implants us inside the antihero's head using a cascade of hilarious and horrifying nihilistic rants that don't quite resemble anything you've ever heard in a movie.

Noe's ingenuity in reinventing the subjective style of TAXI DRIVER is near-limitless; his array of techniques dazzles, from the Godardian intertitles that break the action like a butcher's cleaver hammering a wooden cutting board, to the deafening gunshots accompanied by digital pans and zooms that throw a Brechtian bucket of icewater on the proceedings whenever they calm down. At times the picture suggests one of Fassbinder's fatalistic fables staged as a William Castle horror movie; in a stroke of genius, Noe conceives of the inevitable crack-up finale not in terms of some novel spin on the image, but as a blizzard of scurrilous language--a head self-narrating to the implode point.

At times, the butcher's and Noe's nihilism seem to be one--and a posturing, collegiate nihilism it can be. And the penultimate section of the movie thunks along as Noe recreates painfully familiar scenes from TAXI DRIVER almost in toto. But the cumulative effect of the movie is lacerating, the way early Scorsese and Toback must have felt the first time out. French-language cinema hasn't gotten this kind of wake-up call since the (lesser) MAN BITES DOG.

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French

Release Date:

17 February 1999 (France)

Also Known As:

I Stand Alone

Filming Locations:

France

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,955, 21 March 1999

Gross USA:

$6,955

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$6,955

Company Credits

Production Co:

Canal+, Les Cinémas de la Zone, Love Streams Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.66 : 1