La mécanique de l'ombre (2016) Online

A film with an intriguing first half hour and set-up, a 70s-style spy thriller with mysterious shadow figures, typewriters and cassette recordings, that loses its way as it dives down into an incomprehensible labyrinthine political head-scratcher.

The muted, stripped down palette and sets and the very intentional non-digital central setup of an accountant transcribing cassette taps does remind of past films like The Conversation.

As it moves on however the initial setup does largely seem like a gimmick to have a base to move off from.

The main reason to keep watching for me is the always-engaging Cluzet. Often called upon to play the 'everyman' in his films (e.g. Tell No One), here he plays Duval very downtrodden - unhappy with his working life, attending AA meetings and living a seemingly very solitary, structured life. And yet when he's embroiled into criminality, he's always believable. He struggles, a fish out of water, usually to be beaten back and really gave me my only reason to keep watching: I wanted to see what would happen to Duval.

A pity given the main parlour games between shadow operatives seeking for 'the notebooks' had lost my interest well before the 87mins were done but there's also nothing especially off-putting going on either.

Scribe or ' La mécanique de l'ombre' is a Film starring Francois Cluzet ('Untouchable') as an accountant who loses his job after a bit of a meltdown. He takes two years to get his life back on track and then receives a telephone call one night offering him a job.

Well he hardly has anything better to do so he accepts despite there being some very strict rules – but all he has to do really is type out transcripts of telephone conversations. What at first seems like an easy gig soon takes on a much darker hue when he realises what is being revealed in the tapped phone calls.

Now this is really well made and the acting is superb. The plot is original up to a point and the direction and cinematography are professional and I really liked it as a film. However, it suffers from the thriller disease in that it has to have a few twists and a climactic end etc. I sort of spotted them all - except one and so for me it did tread a path that appeared a tad well worn. Despite that it is still a film with much to applaud hence my rating.

This is a combination of Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION, starring Gene Hackman, and the Alan Pakula's atmosphere, for instance PARALLAX VIEW, with a sort of Kafka like complicated story, where a simple dude, played by François Cluzet - the French Dustin Hoffman -, a simple office clerk, despaired and alcoholic, loses his job before being hired by a mysterious organization for listening recorded tapes, of conversations...In that purpose, our lead sits all day in an empty office, empty room. But everything will get awry for our lead will also have to deal with the DGSI - the French Intelligence Service, the equivalent of the US Homeland or British MI 5. Very impressive piece of work, but unfortunately spoiled by a wasted ending, a Hollywood like ending. So shame, for this reason I will never see it again.

You are watching this movie and you are thinking that it never starts. It lengthens, lengthens and nothing happens. Always the same and nothing new. Later you think, do I have many characters? And I think so. Many of them do not know who they are or what they paint in the film. But it is also that he begins at the end of the film you understand that it is not necessary, he does not tell anything interesting for the film. He is trying to make a character profile, but he does not contribute anything to the story. Above the end is like that could never happen.

I can not say that the actors are well, because I see them so inert that for a long time I do not know what they want to tell me. But I think that the director does not know it.

The photography and the technical part are very good, it does not look French. It is more American. The problem is that it is just a good container, something that does not say anything.

The management, counting that he does not know how much film is left over. That the actors are lost, if not left over. That makes plans that do not say anything although aesthetically they are very publicity. He does not know where he is going.

If you do not want to think you've lost a lot of time, do not see it.

This is a spy thriller with a minimalist style and a paranoid feel. It has theme about one who places trust in those who don't trust others.The strength in the script is that it places the viewer right in the predicaments about telling the truth, and being trapped with seemingly no way out. For this it should be given credit for the genuine feeling of intrigue. Atmosphere builds very well but it is impossibly to sustain as a crime enters the storyline where the impact is low in atmosphere. From then on there are difficulties with plot holes about the scribe's options. The uneventful daily routine, where our middle-aged, recently long term-unemployed protagonist sits in an empty modern apartment and types up mundane phone conversations on an old fashioned typewriter is a bit far fetched, as is his easy trust of his anonymous employer who presumably he would have vetted after such a strange job interview. But, all in all, it is a slightly above average thriller.

This has a lot going for it - top-of-the-line performing from the two leads downwards, sure-footed direction, fine sense of claustrophobia, tasty camera-work - but against that is a complete derivativeness, we 've been seeing variations on this ever since the Cold War so where we once had novelty now we have only comparison shopping i.e. is this as good as x, how does Cluzet compare with y, does Podaldes eclipse z. Coming off a nervous breakdown, unemployed and without change of a match Cluzet fields a mysterious phone call and is offered a post with strings; the job is transcribing tapes of tapped phone calls, the strings are he may not leave the windowless room in which the transcribing is done even for lunch. In terms of inscrutability Podalydes makes the average Chinese diplomat seem gregarious but, inevitably, things begin to spiral beyond Cluzet's ability to control them. Worth seeing for the two leads if nothing else.