The Man in the Basement movie storyline. A Parisian couple decides to sell an unsanitary basement in their building. A very ordinary, nondescript man, Mr. Fonzic, shows up to buy it. Nothing unusual there, until the man moves into the cellar and makes it his permanent residence. The couple tries desperately to cancel the sale but to no avail. Worse, Mr. Fonzic becomes a threat to their family as he befriends their teenage daughter on whom he seems to exert a perverted influence.
For his new film, Philippe Le Guay (Service Entrance) ventures for the first time on the grounds of domestic thriller, and delivers a captivating story of manipulation, featuring a frightening performance by François Cluzet.
In this provocative thriller, a couple sells a storage space in the basement of the building where they live to a seemingly ordinary gentleman. When he makes the place his home, they discover his hateful, manipulative, and anti-Semitic nature and desperately try to cancel the deal.
Film Review for The Man in the Basement
What is Holocaust denial? Jacques Fonzic would reply: “Don’t settle for the official version. Now, who is Jacques Fonzic? He is the one who asks the inconvenient questions. He is the one who poses as a victim. He’s the one lurking in the shadows. He’s the man in the cellar.
This cellar that he bought from Simon Sandberg, telling him that he wanted to store personal belongings there before moving in. It’s only too late that Simon and his family learn the truth about their new “neighbor”. He is a history professor expelled from the profession for having, among other things, questioned the Holocaust. Thus, the conspiratorial wolf has entered the Parisian sheepfold and he will sow discord with his words.
It took almost ten years for Philippe Le Guay to overcome this scenario. First, because the plot does not come out of nowhere. This misadventure, to put it mildly, happened to friends of the director. This Jewish couple had sold their cellar without knowing it to a neo-Nazi, notorious Holocaust denier, who then moved there. It took two years of procedures to dislodge the individual. Le Guay therefore felt a certain responsibility towards his friends. Secondly, because he had to find a way to approach such a delicate subject as Holocaust denial.
The filmmaker, rather accustomed to comedy, had the skill to portray Holocaust denial as an indirect, obscure threat. First by this cellar, gloomy, in the middle of the dark and disturbing maze of the basement. In front of Le Guay’s camera, the shadow would almost come to life and the director makes it an emanation of Fonzic, of his malicious words.
However, he does not pronounce them himself. His most outrageous words come from the mouths of the other characters. This illustrates the hold that Holocaust denial statements can have on individuals, while remembering that none of us is immune to being influenced by this type of discourse, whether by rallying to Holocaust denial or on the contrary by turning to the excesses of political correctness. The microcosm of the building reflects society quite well.
installing Pychosis
Like this continuous handheld camera, nothing is stable in the heads of the characters, in whom psychosis gradually sets in. The paw of the co-screenwriter and former clinical psychologist Gilles Taurand is undoubtedly not foreign to the credibility of the manipulation that Fonzic exerts on this small world. The more the film progresses, the more the perversity of its strategy is revealed.
This is where the problem lies. The scenario turns out to be unbalanced. The meticulous work that has been done for the Holocaust denier’s actions finds no equal in the opposing forces. If the character of Bérénice Bejo makes it possible, through her research, to give a face to the victims of the Shoah, the presentation that Renier makes of them has more the flavor of an infantilizing lecture.
We also regret that the parallel between Holocaust denial and conspiracy is only barely touched upon in this film which barely lacks public utility. The clapperboard at the end is careful not to show us the excesses in which the denialist — and by extension conspiratorial — spiral can lead the most malleable minds, such as that of the teenage daughter of the Renier-Bejo couple. Le Guay does not go far enough in his approach, yet oh so commendable, and leaves us wanting more.
The writing, despite its flaws, serves on a set a golden role for François Cluzet who plays an admirably distressing Jacques Fonzic. Always on the wire, the actor takes the viewer from discomfort to pity in the blink of an eye. His shadowy, ghostly-looking character is all the more threatening in that it gives him the air of an Everyman, with a side just unhealthy enough to remind us that we are all capable of the worst.
The Man in the Basement (2023)
L’homme de La Cave
Directed by: Philippe Le Guay
Starring: François Cluzet, Bérénice Bejo, Jérémie Rénier, Martine Chevallier, Jack Claudany, Antoine Levannier, Jonathan Zaccaï, Denise Chalem, Ambroise Di Maggio, Sharif Andoura
Screenplay by: Philippe Le Guay
Production Design by: Emmanuel de Chauvigny
Cinematography by: Guillaume Deffontaines
Costume Design by: Elisabeth Tavernier
Set Decoration by: Thybault D’Anzul
Music by: Bruno Coulais
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Greenwich Entertainment
Release Date: January 27, 2023
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