Man Bites Dog [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Man Bites Dog is a Belgian faux-documentary and high-concept satire of media violence which follows the lethal exploits of Benoit Benoit Poelvoorde, an affable, and very talkative, serial killer. He kills for money, and he kills for pleasure, and he talks all the while about philosophy and the proper technique for weighing a corpse down underwater. He is followed through his slaughter-fest by the filmmakers, Remy and Andre (the actual filmmakers, Remy Belvaux and Andre Bonzel), and the line between reporter and subject becomes blurred pretty quickly. The filmmakers become more and more involved in Benoit's actions, starting with the relatively innocent act of holding a flashlight for him. Eventually, when their funding runs out, Benoit hires them to continue making the film, and soon they are accomplices in a gang rape. While this film has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, its message rings true: the media tend to become part of the stories they report upon as surely as a physicist changes a wave by looking at it. ~ John Voorhees, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Subtitle: Eng
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Features:
  • 1993 video interview with the filmmakers
  • "No C4 For Daniel-Daniel" short
  • Stills gallery
  • Theatrical trailer

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Benoit Poelvoorde - Ben
       Remy Belvaux - Remy (Reporter)
       Andre Bonzel - Cameraman
       Jean - Marc Chenut - Patrick (Sound Man #1)
       Alain Oppezzi - Franco (Sound Man #2)
       Vincent Tavier - Vincent (Sound Man #3)
       Alain Francois - Video Reporter

• Director:

  Remy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde

• Producer:

  Remy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde

• Screenwriter:

  Remy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Tavier

• Cinematographer:

  André Bonzel

• Composer (Music Score):

  Jean-Marc Chenut, Laurence Dufrene

• Editor:

  Remy Belvaux, Eric Dardill

REVIEW:

• Kitted out with the shoestring realism of a black-and-white mockumentary and a lot of over-the-top media satire, C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous manages to invert serial-killer cliches by focusing on the banality of murder itself. Instead of the picturesque boogeymen of Silence of the Lambs or Seven, we get Benoit Poelvoorde's loquacious, charming, and workmanlike Ben, who treats killing like any other enjoyable, but difficult job and dispatches kids, grannies, and young lovers equally matter-of-factly. Poelvoorde and his fellow writer/director/actors, Remy Belvaux and Andre Bonzel, invest their film with a bleached-out squalor that's partially a function of camcorder cinema and partially the result of their wittily depraved script. With a face and demeanor that recalls James Woods at his cold-blooded best and a character so blase about his chosen profession that he's almost likable in a sick, twisted way, Poelvoorde is the only one of the filmmaker/performers who really registers onscreen. Like the real-life media functionaries who daily chew up reality into tabloid gruel, the others exist on the periphery, omnipresent shadows flickering across the colorful depravities they serve up as entertainment. C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous is a distinctly unpleasant film to watch, but its quotidian monstrosity is eerily accurate. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi