I Stand Alone (DVD)

In this French drama, Gaspar Noe, who won awards (Prix Georges Sadoul, Cannes Crix Week) for his 40-minute Carne (1991), continues where that film ended, beginning with a Carne recap: The Butcher (Philippe Nahon) narrates, telling how, as a war orphan working at 14, he opened his horsemeat butcher shop and fathered a mute, retarded daughter. After the mother and daughter left for life in a Paris suburb, he served a prison term after an assault on someone he mistakenly believed had raped his daughter. The follow-up sequel, set in a Lille suburb, begins in 1980: Obese bar owner (Franjkyie Pain) is pregnant by The Butcher, who is unable to find work. The couple moves in with her mother, but he becomes irritated with the two women and goes to Paris where the humiliation of job-hunting and the sum total of futility and hopelessness triggers thoughts of what he might accomplish with his gun and his last three bullets. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi