Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12236 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-31
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 83 minutes

Synopsis
Two friends, Marie and Alex set off to Alex's parent's secluded homestead in the country for relaxation and a chance to study. When night falls, however, the tranquillity of their location is shattered as Alex is bound and taken away. Marie manages to escape the intruder, but can she save her friend's life in time?

Customer Reviews

High tension, Gallic style
Director Alexandre Aja's "Haute Tension" (released in the USA as "High Tension", but incongruously renamed "Switchblade Romance" for UK audiences) is a gory, visceral, celebration of the American slasher movie and horror tradition ... with more than a touch of Gallic sophistication and style thrown in, and the odd reverential nod paid to Godard and the French new wave of the 50's/60's.

Based on Dean Koontz's "Intensity" - itself made into a tame film in the US - Aja gives us a very claustrophobic version and a controversial denouement. While the slaughter takes place in a large mansion in Koontz's original, here we have a smaller farmhouse with creakier stairs and floorboards. While the killer escapes in a huge mobile home in the novel, here the butcher drives a battered old camion ... a simple blue van man. There is nowhere for our heroine to hide! And, while the profession of Koontz's killer has its own significance, when Aja's murderer is finally unmasked ... it creates a decided disturbance in the force.

The story? Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maiwenn) visit Alex's parents' in their isolated farmhouse for some intense study prior to their university exams. They are grateful to be away from the pressures of academe and to have the chance of relaxed concentration. But their plans are about to be chopped, slashed, and cut short by the arrival of blue van man, who will set about butchering the entire household before carrying off Alex, bound and gagged, in his van. Marie survives the initial onslaught and has to devise a means of both staying alive and rescuing her friend.

The whole film is a homage to American horror. The killer is a reference (and reverence) to the leather-faced, chainsaw wielding creature from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and the scene at the petrol station reminds you of the same film. There are touches of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left" as the young women head towards inevitable horror and extinction. Use is made of a cornfield, not so much Hitchcock as Stephen King. But, while the killer shuffles around in a boilersuit, reminiscent of "Halloween" and "Friday 13th", Aja avoids the flashing breasts and glitzy girlies offered up by much recent Hollywood 'horror' to buy in the young boys. This is gimme that old time horror without the teen time sexism!

As such, as a reprise of Koontz and slasher horror, it is both reverential and self-parodying. The blood spouting and visceral sound effects of ribs grating and cracking may not be for the squeamish, but it is for those with a sense of humour. The echoes of Wes Craven's ironic advertising blurb, "remember, this is only a movie", are delivered with existentialist aplomb. There is just a hint of Godard, the constant references to material outside the film, the struggle to interpret what we have seen and heard, to make sense of inexplicable and partial images, and finally, the killer caught on film, unselfconsciously posing for the camera - "look at me, I'm in a movie".

There are axes, razors, knives, whirling saw blades, spurting blood, gaping bodies and throats, gurglings and splinterings. It's not for the squeamish. This is old fashioned bloodfest. It is neatly directed. The performance by Cecile de France is a standout. But Philippe Nahon is a coolly horrific villain whose reality slowly and convincingly degenerates into a near comic book caricature. Filmed in six weeks, this is a comparatively low budget film. Less attention is paid to the special effects than to the creation of tension and emotional distortion.

The bloodletting is highly visual, and has attracted criticism in the States. It is perhaps more explicit than Hollywood tolerates ... but then Hollywood indulges in high body count thrillers where hundreds of people can be blown away as long as it's done tastefully (i.e. with a lot of firepower involved). The butchery here is explicitly to scare. The pleasure of horror is not watching the others being killed as empathising with the survivor - putting yourself in the place of the one who will live, enjoying the thrills, spills, and scares, in the certain (?) knowledge that you will survive.

Which makes the twist at the end of "Haute Tension" the subject of so much criticism. Aja clearly saw it as embodying (or disembodying) a greater degree of emotional tension, adding relevance to what has gone before. I certainly found it a neat touch - having quickly identified the film as Koontz's story, I stayed watching because of the claustrophobia and stylishness Aja and de France brought to the production. The plot twist spun it away from Koontz and gave the film a whole new notoriety and a different set of references. French films are rarely stand alone - they revere and reference what has gone before. Aja, here, is not trying to create an entirely new horror movie, but he is exploring emotion and relationships with far greater sophistication and style than run-of-the-kill slasher films achieve.

An excellent film, well translated to DVD in anamorphic 2.35:1, with sharp images, good colour saturation, good use of low light levels, and a soundtrack which is a vital ingredient to the tension and visceral delight. The subtitles are effectively presented and well-judged. Altogether an excellent package which will doubtless set you arguing with your friends for some time - just stay clear of sharp objects.

Post modern, never mind the inconsistencies, slasher.
**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
Slightly disappointing French horror that thinks it is cleverer than it is! Some good set pieces but as others have mentioned the central idea was not an original one and rather than reminiscent of Fight Club etc the 'dishonest' directing of the film reminded me more of Bobby Ewing appearing in the shower in Dallas to reveal that the whole of the last series or so of programmes was all but a dream.
It is fine to depict the whole 'victim is killer' angle but you cannot just present this like a rabbit out of a hat ignoring the mass of plot holes and now implausable scenes left in its wake. Where did the van materialise from when the two women arrived in a car? who was driving the other vehicle during the pursuit etc? If you are going to adopt this type of 'psychotic episode' approach to directing you could technically present anything and any number of scenes, characters and events you please and disregard everything you have presented at the end of the film without adherence to consistency, plausability or respect for the intelligence of the viewer. In my view this approach does not make for an enjoyable movie experience regardless of how good the set pieces etc are.
Many people will and do like this film but I like films to have some grounding in reality; 'Shrooms' has been widely slated for various reasons one of which is its central premise similar to this film. I would say at least Shrooms as well as other films mentioned depicted this 'state' in a retrievable way that upon looking back you can see how it slotted together and for that reason with all its many faults, lack of visceral intensity, goreless hazy confusion I prefer the much maligned Shrooms to this.
I watched the directors commentary as well and he sounded quite confused and contradicted himself more than once when referring to his approach and explanation of scenes. One particularly cringe worthy moment came when the guy interviewing the director at the scene where 'Marie' caves the 'killers' head in a number of times with the barbed wire post, said he liked it as in most films the cliche is they'll hit the killer once on the head and than leave the body instead of finishing him off, the director agreed only than for the next scene to show the killer in the most cliched manner attempt to strangle her when she lowered her head to detect whether he was breathing. They ignored that bit and moved on in their commentary. It was also irksome how Marie managed to survive after being stabbed by the other girl she would have rapidly bled to death. Instead she was able to chase after her friend with a buzz saw half her body weight (allbeit portrayed in the body of her alter ego) through the woods and kill a motorist with it, not to mention then being impaled by a crow bar and still surviving - or am I missing the point and was all this her psychotic fantasies as well?
Worth a watch but can't recommend it much more than that.

Great film, undermined by it's own central gimmick.
Switchblade Romance - re-worked from the original French title, which translates more fittingly as 'High Tension' - takes the various conventions and characteristics familiar from the slew of American exploitation slasher-films of the 1980's, and attempts to update them with a fancy French veneer, and an air of Euro credibility. Ultimately, in adapting the codes and connotations of said genre, it was only fitting that director and co-writer Alexandre Aja would eventually adapt the clichés and implausibility's as well, as he has characters blindly entering darkened rooms, breathing heavily, running from the bad guy, screaming, and seemingly forgetting all sense of reason and common sense in the face of danger.

Not that any of this detracts from the overall enjoyment of the film, since Aja and his co-writer throw something even more head-scratchingly implausible at us, with a third-act twist that forces us to re-watch and re-evaluate the film in an entirely new light. Having read various interpretations on the ending elsewhere on the Internet, I'm still no surer of what Aja is trying to say with the film, if, in fact, he's actually saying anything at all. The film itself could be viewed as an essay on the implausibility of the horror/slasher genre, or perhaps the ending was just the director's attempt to leave things vague to create something of a "love it or hate it" talking point for the audience. Who knows?

The vague opening scene, showing a battered and bloodied young woman sitting in a hospital, about to tell her story to a police video camera, can be seen as our main clue to understanding the deeper themes of the film. From here, we flash back in time and the story unfolds, with two girls, Alexia and Marie, taking a study break with Alexia's family at their rural, countryside farmhouse. One night, a hulking stranger turns up in a rickety old van and brutally slaughters the family, leaving only the two girls alive. One has luckily managed to evade this callous invader... instead being forced to watch from behind closet doors and from under beds as the mother, father and young son are butchered. The other girl is bound and kidnapped by the murderer, leaving our sole heroine to try and save her before it's too late. This part of the film is great, with the director creating an escalating sense of tension and seemingly revelling in the intricacies of the violence and the myriad of cinematic references. It plods along nicely from one high-tension set piece to another before things begin to become a little strained during a high-speed chase through the woods. It is here, eventually, when the whole film will begins to unravel.

Ultimately the film requires us, as an audience, to assume a great deal and to draw our own conclusions, which is, for me, less about being edgy and allowing the audiences to think for themselves, and more about bad writing. It's a shame too, because the first two acts of the film are great, with the filmmakers creating tension through editing and layered sound design, and a great heartless adversary, in the shape of Phillip Nahon (familiar to Euro-philles as a regular in the films of Gaspar Noe). The ending seems like a shallow gimmick inserted last in an attempt to distance the film from its lurid U.S. influences and to give it a touch of art-house credibility (that kind of "hey! Look at me! I'm making a serious statement!!" aesthetic that's been so popular since the much more successful Fight Club, from 1999).

I still think this is a good film, and is one that should appeal to serious horror/shasher movie fans, if not for the tense first half, then certainly for the numerous severed limbs and axe stabbings. However, be-warned, the ending might undermine you're enjoyment of the film and will certainly detract from the tension and overall thrill element when you come to watch the film for a second (or third) time, with the knowledge of who's doing what to who destroying any of the film's fresh, lingering menace.