Denis' noir-riffing thriller remains her bleakest work (from everything I've seen). A bloody and jagged knife that's started to rust. Vincent Lindon is Robert Mitchum, a humble man who gets called back to enact revenge upon those who have destroyed his family. There is no hope and no salvation, only brutality.
Viewing this in the context of knowing it as Denis' first feature using mainly digital does provide insight into its presentation. It is perhaps Denis' most (intentionally?) ugly film. The digital photography is muddy and dark, though never not precise. It's a grey world and sapped of color and vibrancy. Every shot purposeful and feeling intentional but also thrown off, though this could be said of a majority of her post-2000's work. But it's through this digital lens that she's working with here that makes the whole endeavor come across as a more "gritty", for lack of a better word, genre exploration than some of the earlier ones were.
The anger of the upper class here is seething in its fury. No one is provided safety from those with the cash, you will be used to satisfy or at least satiate their hunger and then left for dead. It is a world bathed in shadows. And knowing what happens within said shadows is maybe better off not being revealed to us - depravity awaits.
There's a degree to which it is a male power fantasy to be "the one who comes in and saves the day", as it were. Being called into a dangerous/shady situation and solving it for the family/community around said male. As mentioned above, it plays into noir/thriller archetypes. What is a man to do when his idea of being the hero to whomever cannot be actualized. Denis undermines the entire male bravado here by placing it in perspective of a world dominated wealth. Wealth equals power, and power means righteousness (even righteous revenge) is futile. Settling a score or even getting even is destined to end in more tragedy. Heroes don't save the world here, they don't even live to see the sunrise. They disappear into the darkness never to reemerge from its depths.
