
Marine biologist and shark expert Sophia (Berenice Bejo) faces a double loss when her husband and her team perish at the hands of Lilith, a mean mako shark they were pursuing in the Pacific Ocean. Several years pass and still scarred Sophia is contacted by an eco-warrior vigilante group headed by passionate Mika (Lea Leviant). To her surprise, Lilith has located herself in Paris and more specifically the Seine teamed with local river police Sgt Adil (Nassim Lyes), they are left to grapple with the frightening implications of this.
I am turning over the idea of calling Under Paris an ordinary movie since it has some brilliance. I don’t think I’ve lately felt so stuck on a film in a good way as I have with this one. The premise is unoriginal since similar movies have been made for ages probably ever since the release of Jaws a film about an underwater monster. There’s a twist, however, and that’s where the Paris catacombs come in. Even so, the basic plot devices remained the same: a huge underwater predator emerges from the shadows and eats whichever unfortunate souls cross its path. However, Under Paris pleasantly surprised me because of its boldness in heralding an environmental warning, especially with regard to its conclusion. That was not something I had anticipated at all.
Under Paris is a mediocre horror thriller using shark attacks as its weapon. If you don’t scoff at the idea of watching a movie about people being stalked for food and being killed by sharks under the sea, then you find a LOT to enjoy in Under Paris. The characters are distinctly sparse, with the same old kind of suffering and having one head cant speech in the middle, but this father-figure speech makes me miss the brilliance of the UUS Indianapolis. And there is a ‘tyrant/politician ignorant’ mayor too ICTYBY and Secondly, just in case you were worried that the film isn’t trying hard enough to emulate Spielberg. There is also what seems like an endless, and altogether bonkers sequence where characters have to prove the blatantly obviously not there shark is blatantly obviously there. The reality is since Jaws went in-depth and did the best work in such scenarios, any effort that tries to compete closely will have losses this whole idea was done almost to perfection over 50 years back, and no one has ever come close since.
That touch of mediocrity is also carried by the cast, who are merely passable if that and looking for great emotes Bejo and Lyes focus most of their energies in oscillating between a blank thousand-yard stare and being an actual human character, and Levian probably does more baby cucumbers than necessary by playing irritating self-righteous ecowarrior who is wrong most of the time.
But, Le Paris has options in this case that do require a brain and that is the integration of the whole concept of environmentalism. The first image shown is of the great Pacific garbage patch and there is a persistent presence of the pollution in the water caused by human beings as the main visual of the story. It is made painfully obvious that the consequences which drove Lilith’s actions were human influence, and that humanity generally as a collective is ill-prepared for the scale of repercussions such a course of action entails (this allegory is stretched quite far, but such extremes are the reason this type of films succeed). There is an unwavering direct focus on the political elitism in France who are using the Olympics to cover up their lack of authentic effort made towards environmentalism (in the context of recent news regarding the attempts to purify the Seine, this seems quite prudent). More importantly than all that, the movie takes an amateur position on what I suppose is called gesture environmentalism.
Mika’s character is in charge of Save Our Seas, a group of wannabe ecowarriors and stereotypical hackers, who turn out to be media whores so bent on creating a moment when saving a single shark will be analogous to saving the entire ocean’s publicity that they willingly walk into the mouth of the beast. I mean, taking into consideration that the ecologies of the world are directly responsible for the film’s axis as in-country politics, I did sort of admire how the filmmakers didn’t really seem to care about what people thought about them making such people who, parasitical like, want Thunberg to do all the work for them to begin with, thumbs in the eye.
As for another topic of interest the ending, which is one word shocking. I would like to be as light as possible here in stating what has been said so far, but I did have a good time seeing how Under Paris attempts to change the typical hackneyed endings of such animal attack movies. It still follows this logic that human actions as they often do, lead to disastrous results in a more bombastic fashion, and at the point of resolution do not have the need to resort to these clichés or provide the audience with the gratification they normally expect. Rather they take a completely different and quite bold approach one that does have the hallmarks of creating a sequel with elements that we don’t actually require but which otherwise makes Under Paris stand out quite distinctly as a movie that offers a bleak and quite cynical sense as to how the world or humanity in general will tackle the aftermath of the climate catastrophe.
It’s decent Once more, considering that a sizable part of the budget has presumably already been used to shoot most of the underwater scenes, which are absurdly confined but also very good, it is a film that does not put much energy into the need for a shark in the CGI realm. No one ever appears to want to perform a Spielberg in that subject anymore. There, that CGI shark really could look a little better than it does right about now, particularly whenever the creature needs to share screen time with actual people and actual settings. The most ridiculous use of shitty science fiction is about how far things will go in principle. The smaller screen is most probably not assisting therein as well. That is to say, virtually towards the end of the film, does Under Paris seek to be inventive with regard to its cinematography such as the one where most things really get wild in the City of Lights in the conclusion, Up to this point, however, anything resembling actual creativity looks let us be generous like it was sketched and traced from the animal attack movies of the past.
Under Paris is a very hilarious film, yet somehow it isn’t a comedian’s film. I find myself torn about this comedy. Most of it is absolutely dull a poor copy that you’ve already seen more than enough, with bad acting poor use of computer graphics, and a reluctance to do anything original in a movie whose plot is about a big shark eating people more often than not. And yet, Under Paris does manage to salvage itself by being able to construct a very specific and targeted message of eco-misguidance that not only acts as an alarm bell to quack groups in general but also as a critic to the do-something brigade, and in the way it chooses to end the story. Because of this, I believe Under Paris deserves a second look which is against what I would have probably thought, and for that, it is also worth recommending.
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