Black Heaven

On a beautiful summer day in the south of France, the sun glimmers on the translucent blue water and the beginnings of young love are in the air for Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and Marion (Pauline Etienne). However, when the couple seek sexual solace in a changing room at the beach club, they stumble upon a mysterious cellphone and unwittingly answer a call from a stranger named Dragon. Dragon has plans to meet a woman named Sam (Louise Bourgoin) the next day. Marion and Gaspard, like the curious lovers in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, decide to unravel the mystery. The couple attempt their best spy impersonation, which is a far cry from inconspicuous, and finds Dragon dead in a car from asphyxiation and Sam barely alive. Gaspard runs into Sam by chance a few days after the event and she reveals her actual name to be Audrey. Gaspard is lured by the adulteress into a deadly videogame called Black Hole, where dark shrouded avatars matriculate in a gloomy cityscape. Audrey causes naïve men to obsess over her, drawing them into Black Hole, where they fall prey to her deadly wishes. Convinced that dying with Audrey will lead them to a videogame-like paradise, the men end up committing suicide in real life. However, Audrey is only the tantalizing face of the operation, as the film takes an interesting Freudian twist. It's basically Kingdom Hearts meets a David Lynch film, but the plot holes run wild. Apart from the promising storyline, which would operate better as an actual videogame, the use of saturated colour and on-location shooting for the "real life" scenes provide a strong contrast to the sinister game world of Black Hole. It seems as though filmmaker Gilles Marchand was striving for a surreal art house gem, but unfortunately, the film is just a bit too incoherent for any status at all. There are no DVD extras to clear up the confusion.