Co-directed by Timothée Hochet and Lucas Pastor, Stéphane is a spell binding found footage horror comedy that was like a French cousin to the fantastic Creep. The cast may be small but they really made an impact on me.
Timothée (Bastien Garcia) is an amateur film director who one day while trying to film some scenes for a short film contest, encounters a most eccentric man. This larger than life character introduces himself as Stéphane (Pastor), and impresses the young director with his tales of having worked as a stunt man. By a series of misadventures, Timothée ends up on Stéphane's private island where they decide to make a short World War II film alongside the meek and subservient Bianca (Eva Gregorieff). While Timothée is earnest in making the film, he is also secretly working on a mean-spirited documentary about Stéphane, finding the man at once both utterly ridiculous and fascinating. There may be a more dark and sinister side to the man however, and getting on his bad side may be a most terrible thing.
As a found footage this was wonderful, the small cast are mostly made up of the three core characters who were all perfectly cast. With Stéphane you have someone who really reminded me of Mark Duplass' Josef (Creep), but this character is somehow even more weird, yet more likeable. The horror remains just out of reach but there are moments where the viewer is secretly shown his more sinister side, such as when he takes a shotgun to his car engine while Timothée is sleeping (having offered to drive him home) and pretends the car broke down on its own, or when he sees the director flirting with Bianca and so purposely throws a wine bottle on the floor and states it was an accident. The character carries himself around like a bull in a china shop, causing chaos wherever he goes, an intense screen presence, and a powerful aura hidden beneath his bumbling ways. Timothée is much more normalised, but he is hardly the most noble protagonist, having amusing delusions of grandeur about the film he is trying to make when it is clear that he too seems to be a bit of an idiot. I liked the intense co-dependant relationship the two men seem to create, and how easy it was for Timothée's ego to be stroked. Last of all is Bianca, a character who barely has any lines in the whole seventy eight minute movie, but is able to perfectly look like someone who is with the two men against her will just by the constantly scared and bewildered look on her face. It was impressive to be able to act so effectively in near silence, even if her role seemed mostly to exist for comedic purposes.
The comedy/horror split mostly centres on the former. Throughout there are hints of horror, especially with some fantastic unsettling moments where almost subliminal images are edited in to show hints of something far more scary happening (as if it were footage that had been recorded over). Without going into too many spoilers, it is around ten minutes left when the shoe drops and the horror really begins. I did feel this was too little too late, I would have preferred a longer section for this final part. Saying that, it was visually exciting to watch, and featured some good looking special effects, and a neat twist that I wasn't expecting. The comedy side occurs around the two men, with Timothée it is his overblown confidence in his abilities, while as strange as Stéphane can be, there was something almost endearing about him, though saying that as someone watching him on screen, I'm sure if I had been in a room with him I would have been terrified!
This French version of Creep excels with its perfect core cast, especially with Pastor. It may have veered more on surreal comedy than horror, but there was still a mix of the two genres that could be felt throughout the runtime that made for a captivating found footage film. To be fair, even the IMDB page for the film doesn't label this as a horror, citing only 'comedy'. Stéphane is currently streaming exclusively on ARROW, worth watching.
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