HNUM²

Four prisoners, all with plans to escape, find a journal filled with magical incantations, one of which offers them freedom.

Set almost entirely in one location, a dingy prison cell, the story begins with a nice and gory prelude. The writing of the journal.

Skip forward 70-something years and Eric Carrère, a white collar criminal is remanded to a cell with Lassalle, Marcus and Daisy, three ‘lifers’ dreaming of release. Lassalle, the quiet, educated, wife murderer. Marcus, a transsexual with a violent past. Daisy, a man raised in a barn, with the emotional and mental levels you would expect from someone who grew up with pigs as role models.

Carrère soon settles into his new role as an inmate, but the longing to be free increases day by day. The need to escape and see his family again grows, which seems to be the catalyst for the journal to reveal itself.

Upon reading, Carrère discovers that it seems to be filled with black magic spells. They all laugh it off until Daisy insists that he wants to see some magic. Obliging, Carrère reads the spell, shocked when a ball of flame shoots from the symbol drawn on the floor.

Upon further reading, they discover that the journals writer finds a way to escape, and plan to figure out just how he did.

Of course, when dealing with black magic, things go wrong. Bloody wrong.

The four leads all play their characters perfectly.  With just a stare, Gérald Laroche makes you feel for Carrère.  You can see it in his whole being that he needs escape, that he’s not fit for the world of prison. Philippe Laudenbach plays Lassalle with the kind of sorrow you’d expect from a long-term con who is filled with remorse and who just happens to be to Marcus’ taste.  Clovis Cornillac as the muscular, big breasted Marcus shows violence and tenderness with equal believability.  Dimitri Rataud is not given a whole lot to do, but he definitely is believable as the crazy Daisy.
Because of this level of believability you get to know the characters well enough to care about their fates.

The set/production design is great. The location bleak enough to feel sympathy for the murderers trapped in the tiny bug infested cell. The mostly muted colors of the movie bring to mind the kind of harsh prison of olden days.
The minimal score also works very well. It emphasizes the loneliness felt. Everything about this movie makes you long for an escape.
The gory effects are very well done. Bloody and realistic, but not over the top or too frequent that it dulls you to them. However, they’re not going to satisfy a gorehound.

There were a couple of scenes that felt out of place with the rest of the film, but nothing to really detract from this sometimes grisly, often intelligent, always good to look at, claustrophobic film.