A supremely nasty, deeply unnerving work that exists at the intersection of psychosexual co-dependency and homicide, Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz’s Alleluia locates a singular, engrossing, fever-dream-like physical infatuation and then mines that seam in our collective unconscious for all the uncomfortableness it’s worth. A Directors’ Fortnight premiere at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and loosely based on the lurid story of the “lonely hearts” serial killers of the 1940s (subsequently immortalized in Leonard Castle’s 1969 film The Honeymoon Killers) this arthouse entry breathes life into one of the more darkly memorable killers in recent screen history: a woman who derives scary power from the traditional tropes that usually surround a “queen bee” type jealousy.
Alleluia opens on morgue attendant Gloria (Lola Duenas), a divorcee and single mother whose friend goads her into answering a personal ad. On her first date in ages, Gloria is swept off her feet by Michel (Laurent Lucas), a smooth-talking shoe salesman who posits that footwear affords a window into someone’s soul. Michel, as it turns out, is an inveterate womanizer and professional hustler, wooing older women to satisfy both his corporeal desires and his criminal lifestyle. His intense attention, however, awakens a dangerous obsessiveness in Gloria. When she finds out about his serial philandering and debts, she doesn’t kick him to the curb, but instead gives him money and pledges her devotion to him, promptly stowing her tween daughter with a friend. When Michel takes another widow, Marguerite (Edith le Merdy), as his wife, Gloria initially poses as his needy sister. In a fitful moment of rage, however, she interrupts their coupling, murdering Marguerite. Their odyssey of instability only gets messier from there.
Co-written by Du Welz and Vincent Tavier, Alleluia has some fun with religious symbology—“I invoke the presence of the elementals to take part in this ritual,” says Michel in a weird moment of private invocation prior to his first date with Gloria—but it’s mainly a two-handed character study which takes dark delight in slowly turning audience sympathies toward Michel, who is no angel himself but not animated by the same physically violent impulses as Gloria. With its focus on stylized disquiet and wide-eyed mania, portions of Alleluia faintly recall Amer, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s 2009 triptych giallo. Du Welz’s stagings take on a woozy, nightmarish quality (with a special hat tip to cinematographer Manuel Dacosse’s close-ups and weighted frames), including an amazing musical sequence that totally works despite being a tonal one-off. Some of Alleluia’s images will haunt a viewer long after a screening.
For all its bruising visual punch, though, the movie isn’t necessarily shot through with penetrating psychological insights. Audiences have to more or less submit to the notion that these two toxic personalities are all in with one another. There’s certainly an intimation that Gloria and Michel are sex addicts, but Du Welz isn’t deeply interested in that aspect of their deadly dance. Instead, he unlocks a psychosis that is downright animalistic but at times also seems borderline ridiculous.
What mitigates this willful narrative vagueness are the performances. Lucas, who knows a thing or two about big screen explorations of creepy obsession from the sterling 2000 import With a Friend Like Harry…, navigates Michel’s difficult arc with considerable skill. Meanwhile, Duenas (whom viewers may recognize from her collaborations with Pedro Almodovar) is flat-out incredible, tapping into a deep and primal wellspring of compulsion that will have many viewers considering the private thoughts of casual flings and their loved ones alike.
The easiest American comparison for Du Welz’s film is probably 2003’s Monster, in which Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. But even that film had a pressure release valve—remember the surprisingly feel-good uplift of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” used as an unlikely anthem of the most disenfranchised?—as well as an abundance of character detail. Alleluia has no such moments of relief, no such attempt to get down into the weeds of its characters’ backstories. Instead, it unfolds in an elemental way, its bleakness building, fed like a storm, until a bifurcated climax with two striking (and strikingly different) moments: 1) an almost gleeful homicidal lunge at a minor; and 2) an attempt at domestic reconciliation. Credit to the filmmaker and cast that it’s hard to pinpoint which is more chilling.
Director: Fabrice Du Welz
Starring: Lola Duenas, Laurent Lucas, Edith le Merdy, Helena Noguerra, Stephane Bissot, Anne-Marie Loop
Release Date: July 24, 2015
Entertainment journalist Brent Simon is a superb parallel parker and sworn enemy to auto-play website videos, as well as a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. You can follow him on Twitter.