Surveillance
Country and Year: USA (2008)
Director: Jennifer Lynch
Starring: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond

Rating: 1 out of 4 stars (poor)
Review by: Charlie Prince

Ooh, this one is a real dud. I wish I could have been there when the selection committee for Cannes finished screening Surveillance for the first time. I imagine it must have gone something like this: Someone says “Wow, that was terrible,” which is greeted by general nods of agreement. “Well, at least it fits in with our theme of self-deflating cynicism and unrelenting violence,” another person chips in. “Yeah, that’s true,” a third person agrees, which is greeted by a few more nods. “And, let’s not forget, David Lynch produced it, plus Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman will probably show up,” the first person adds, which is prompted by a burst of exclamations and smiles. “Ah, oui!” “C’est perfect!”

Alright, it probably didn’t go down like that, but I can’t imagine what they were thinking accepting Surveillance into this year’s Cannes lineup. The story revolves around a string of murders, performed serial-killer style complete with creepy masks. We only see flashes of the final bloodbath at the beginning, so the film really opens with the arrival of our stars Bill Pullman (a Lost Highway alum) and Julia Ormond as FBI Agents that have come to help investigate the murders. And I hope you’ve got comfortable seats when you see this, because the whole movie is going to take place at the scene of the crime (in flashback) and this police station, so you might as well settle in.

Although Jennifer Lynch’s style is nowhere near as “out there” as Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway, it is still clear that the apple hasn’t fallen very far from the tree, in this case manifesting itself in intensely odd characters and heavily strained, discordant dialog. As I was leaving the theater here at the 2008 Cannes film festival, I heard several people say they didn’t like the acting, or that they felt the acting “never got into a good rhythm”. But Ormond and Pullman are accomplished actors, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that the seemingly forced dialog was intentionally directed by Lynch, rather than bad performances on the actors’ parts.

“It’s interesting that you were the first one to bring up the lack of trust issue” Pullman tells the local police chief soon after arriving (paraphrased from my notes) — the first of many instances of extremely odd dialog that seem destined to sink the film. Of course, David Lynch has made a career out of making weird dialog seem fascinating, so I was inclined to cut Jennifer some slack at this point in the film. But as Surveillance progressed, it became clear that the dialog isn’t interestingly cryptic or inviting so much as just awkwardly delivered. And, in any case, there’s much less going on in the plot of Surveillance (the plot is more straight-forward than her father’s films), so there’s not nearly as much leeway to read in between the lines.

Another problem is the characters themselves. They are highly exaggerated — cartoons, essentially. This is especially true of the local police officers who are portrayed as so corrupt, they actually shoot out the tires of cars passing by so that they can stop the cars to harass the passengers further. Upon confronting the passengers, they openly engage in ludicrous self-aware “good cop/bad cop” scenarios, evidencing the more severe kind of personality disorders. Not even in the most irreverent of police spoof movies have the police been more unfairly slandered than here, and if it’s meant to have a deeper purpose of some kind, it’s been lost on me.

Which brings me back to my initial question: why in the world did Cannes select this film? Was this primarily a legacy pick? After all, the celebrated David Lynch was a producer on the project. Of course, I realize these things can be highly subjective, so as the movie ended I figured I’d ask other people in the audience what they thought of it, just to be sure. The people on either side of me would be of no help, as the person on my left had slept through most of it, and the guy on my right walked out about half-way through. But after all, this was the 2,400 seat Grand Theatre Lumiere, so I asked 20 or so people as I was leaving what they thought, trying not to reveal my own feelings in the asking. Of that group, 16 said they didn’t like it, 3 liked it, and one guy just kept shaking his head and moaning. So, based on the results of my profoundly unscientific poll, I’m pretty confident the overall reaction was bad.

Now, if I strain really hard, I might be able to patch together something resembling an explanation of what the intent was behind Surveillance. First of all, the name might be a hint. Although Pullman and Ormond do set up “surveillance” cameras as part of their interviews with witnesses of the crimes, that would be a curious reason for the title as the cameras don’t play a role of any significance. So, I’m inclined to think that the title instead refers to the concept of “surveillance” generally and thus possibly the surveillance role of the police, and in this case the FBI’s surveillance of the investigation being conducted by the local police. If this is the intent, perhaps we should interpret the film as a commentary on authority, which would at least give us a fig leaf explanation for the ridiculous scripting of the cops and the equally over-the-top tension between the cops and the FBI. So, then, I take it the message of the film would be that the police and maybe authority in general is corrupt and prone to pettiness and abuses of power. Not very powerful, but at least it gives us something to think about over the 100 minute running time.

And if that explanation is a stretch, I don’t know what we’re left with, except that the film is really violent and cynical, which admittedly fits in with the overall theme of the festival (or at least what I’ve seen so far). And here I’m not being sarcastic — the festival really is one exhausting onslaught after another of brutal inhumanities, with very little light left at the end of the tunnel (if any). If you’re one of those people who can’t bear to watch violence of any kind on-screen, your best bet is to memorize this year’s Cannes lineup and then make sure you never see any of these films. They’re really that violent. But even if you like violent movies, so long as you value your free time in the slightest, I’m afraid I can’t recommend Surveillance. I have a lot of fondness for the Lynches, and wanted to like it, but there’s just nothing doin’ here.

© Charlie Prince

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