Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Bastards Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov May 14, 2014

Nominated for Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Claire Denis' "Les salauds" a.k.a. "Bastards" (2013) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the film and a talent casting featurette with an audio commentary by the French director. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

The neighbor

The film is broken into multiple uneven episodes, some of which have overlapping flashbacks. It isn’t easy to arrange them in ways that make sense, but the chaos that permeates the film is intentional.

Men and women who have little or nothing in common meet and profoundly change the way they live their lives. They use each other for different reasons -- some seek love, some seek pain, some simply wish to be with someone else so that they can feel alive -- and then move on. Life, it seems, is a long cycle of encounters.

Bastards is about a cycle of bad encounters, which may or may not have been pre-arranged. (More about this later on). The cycle begins after an unnamed man commits suicide. Another man on a tanker is then called and asked to go back to Paris. He quietly packs his bags and leaves.

Soon after, the man from the tanker, Marco (Vincent Lindon, Augustine, La Moustache), rents a large apartment in the heart of Paris. His neighbor is a beautiful woman (Chiara Mastroianni, Americano, Love Songs) who lives with her son and is occasionally visited by a much older man (Michel Subor, White Material, The Intruder) and his bodyguards. They are a couple but lead separate lives. Marco and the woman meet in the lobby of the building and immediately become attracted to each other.

A series of flashbacks now reveal why Marco is in Paris -- his sister (Julie Bataille, Paris, je t'aime) has asked for help after the death of her husband. Marco’s niece, Justine (Lola Creton, Goodbye First Love, Something in the Air), also needs help because something terrible has happened to her. She is in a hospital but isn’t saying much. When Marco visits her, the doctors inform him that they might have to operate soon to repair her vagina.

After the hospital visit Bastards moves into a territory David Lynch’s films love to visit -- the flashbacks become longer and a lot more intense and something very, very evil begins hanging around. Marco and the men and women around him quickly lose their cool and become unrecognizable. They have their good reasons, but more often than not it feels like a master puppeteer pulls their strings from above. One bad encounter leads to another, and another, and another.

As the film progresses, fewer and fewer words are uttered. People quietly accept a role chosen by the master puppeteer, and then pure evil consumes their souls. Some completely lose touch with reality. Needless to say, the final twenty or so minutes are pure psychedelic trip.

Claire Denis’ Bastards is a modern film noir pushed to extremes and left to survive on the strength of its atmosphere. It is deeply unsettling, but it frequently looks as deceivingly calm as the French director’s now cult cannibal love story Trouble Every Day.

Everything that takes place in it is part of a giant puzzle whose scattered pieces can be arranged in multiple ways to reveal truths that hurt. One is that people are weak creatures whose hearts and minds can easily be overwhelmed by pure evil. Another is that people are never fully in control of their lives.

The ultimate goal is to bring the viewer into the bleak world of its characters where they -- for different reasons which shall remain unnamed -- choose to become victims, not to allow him to casually observe them. Where these characters go and what they do before the final credits roll seems largely irrelevant.

Bastards looks very different from everything else Denis and her regular director of photography Agnes Godard have shot to date. It was their first digital film, and the use of (cold) colors and (subdued) light in it is indeed very unusual.

Bastards Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Claire Denis' Bastards arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye.

Shot with the Red Epic camera, Bastards looks simply terrific on Blu-ray. Indeed, detail and clarity are outstanding regardless of whether there is plenty of natural or artificial light. Close-ups boast tremendous depth and crispness (see screencapture #2). Contrast levels are stable, though some of the nighttime footage looks somewhat subdued. There is a wide range of solid natural cold colors -- many of the close-ups are so finely detailed and natural looking that one could easily mistake them for digital photographs. There are absolutely no stability issues whatsoever. Finally, the encoding and compression are very good. To sum it all, Bastards is without a doubt one of the very best looking films in Artificial Eye's catalog. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Bastards Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and French LPCM 2.0. For the record, Artificial Eye have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.

Bastards is complimented by an enormously atmospheric score courtesy of the Tindersticks. The muscles of your audio system will not be tested, but if you appreciate nuanced scores where even the tiniest sound/noise is captured with incredible precision and the music is intelligently used to enhance the mood of the film, you are in for a special treat. The dialog is exceptionally crisp, stable, and easy to follow. The English translation is excellent.

Bastards Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - original trailer for Bastards. In French, with imposed English subtitles. (2 min).

• Talent Casting Featurette - a collection of screen tests for Bastards with an outstanding commentary by Claire Denis. The French director discusses the pre-production process, the shooting of key sequences, the unique use of light, some of the challenges the Red Epic camera presented, etc. In French, with optional English subtitles. (19 min).

Bastards Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Claire Denis' first digital film is everything a modern film noir should be -- intelligent, provocative, unpredictable, hugely atmospheric. As far as I am concerned, it is one of the year's very best films. If Bastards is playing in your local theater, go see it on the big screen without reading reviews or press materials for it. If it isn't, I encourage you to add Artificial Eye's excellent Blu-ray release to your collection as soon as possible. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.