The Man in the Basement | Review
Jérémie Renier and François Cluzet in The Man in the Basement
Fascist and Furious: Le Guay Fights Anti-Semites in Gloomy Dramatic Thriller
By Nicholas Bell | Published on January 11, 2023
French property laws and ambiguously fashioned homegrown terrorism provide the dramatic backbone in Philippe Le Guay’s interesting, ultimately unsatisfying home invasion thriller, The Man in the Basement. Although the film provides an intriguing intersection of subject matter usually reserved for exploration in more grimly determined melodramas, the insidiousness of its titular villain, who remains a vague composite of troubling ideas and propaganda, is by far the most compelling element mucking about a familiar scenario wherein a dull, white, petit bourgeois family veritably invites their own ruin thanks to an endless parade of foolhardy decisions. A handsome cast of notables lean into the stylized, expected beats massaged into a semblance of importance thanks to the subject matter, where privilege coincides a bit too comfortably with automatic victimhood.
Parisian couple Simon (Jeremie Renier) and Helene Sandberg (Berenice Bejo) discover the supposedly innocent process of renting out the unused space of their cellar - a simple act that throws their lives into chaos. The sweet but down and out Jacques Fonzic (Francois Cluzet) is in need of storage space for his recently deceased mother’s belongings. A retired History teacher, he’s meek and mild mannered. But when he actually moves into the cellar to live, the building manager and other tenants in their complex complain. Upon being confronted with his actions, Fonzic professes he’s between jobs, and Simon allows him to stay with his family in the flat for two weeks. But details about the man’s life don’t add up, and as Simon starts to dig, he learns Fonzic is a Holocaust denier who was fired from his post as a professor due to his views. Worse, it appears Fonzic might have targeted his family, considering their surname is Jewish. Since Simon cashed the check and there was an agreement on the price, he’s forced to seek legal counsel to cancel the sale. But with a court date several months in the future, the daily life of the Sandberg family quickly frays, especially as Fonzic takes a liking to their teen daughter, Justine (Victoria Eber), who identifies as a non-practicing Catholic, her mother’s family’s professed religion.
The strangest element of The Man in the Basement is how far removed it feels from Le Guay’s usual interests, like his well-traveled pair of Fabrice Luchini headlined crowd pleasers, The Women on the 6th Floor (2010) or Bicycling with Moliere (2013). He was also the first filmmaker to adapt a Florian Zeller play, crafting The Father into a bizarre interpretation with 2015’s Florida. So this Holocaust denier thriller feels almost imperatively lordly, like mixing the theatricality (and well-intentioned) Denial (2016) from Mick Jackson with John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights (1990), a real estate related thriller exploring the ultimate nightmare of a homeowner with rental properties. Add to this the specifically French sentiments regarding tenant rights, with Cluzet (who previously collaborated with Le Guay on Naked Normandy, about a mayor asking his constituents to pose nude for an American journalist) being as pesky as Maggie Smith’s ‘viager’ in My Old Lady (2014). The central conceit is compelling, especially as Le Guay’s inspiration came from a real-life incident from his personal milieu, but the script from Gilles Taurand and Marc Weitzmann labors over the religious juxtaposition of the Sandbergs’ and their opposing but equally flawed reactions to the situation.
Likewise, the insistence on Fonzic’s acknowledgment of the US government’s deplorable treatment of indigenous peoples isn’t explored effectively enough in comparison to his negationist tendencies regarding the Holocaust; there’s something incredibly powerful in these character observations left out and blown away in the torrid storm of the third act. Renier finds himself called upon to make a self-righteous ass of himself as shortsighted Simon, while the apparently non-practicing but generously defined Catholic background for Bejo’s Helene is supposed to generate empathy for her emotive allyship. But both their characters consistently feel performative, enhanced whenever the peripheral Jonathan Zaccai pops up as Simon’s oafish brother. More interesting but equally obvious is how Fonzic wheedles his way into the sympathies of the bland teen, Nelly, with Victoria Eber basically representative of a blank slate soaking up the contrary energies of the affable Cluzet. Some notables in the supporting cast include character actors Denise Chalem and Patrick Descamps (recently in Joachim Lafosse’s The Restless, 2021) as annoying in-laws and Martine Chevallier (Two of Us, 2019) as a lawyer avoiding retirement. Fans of the three main principles may enjoy their presence in this well-meaning throwback to adult thrillers, but it's ultimately not as striking as the subject matter would suggest.
★★☆☆☆