13 Tzameti (2005)

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

Just perfect...

Disturbing yet enthralling

Best movie ever!

Nearly impossible to discuss without heavy spoilers, this unusual thriller from France involves a young workman who steals his suicidal employer's invite to a secret organisation, knowing only that by attending an opportunity exists for him to get rich quick. As it turns out, the young man has inadvertently signed up to a Russian Roulette game of sorts in which the bored and wealthy place wagers on which participants (from a group of thirteen) will survive with a payout to both the last man standing and anyone betting on him. It is a fascinating idea with all the participants being very willful despite knowing that their survival is a matter of luck (are they that desperate for money or that suicidal?) as well as all the betters conversing about the game as if there is some sort of skill involved in predicting a winner. Thought-provoking as all this is, more than half an hour of the movie elapses before the protagonist finds out about the Russian Roulette game and it is near the halfway point before they start playing. The film also goes on for at least twenty minutes after the game is over, which is a little too long given that all intensity dissipates once the game is through. That said, the middle section of '13 Tzameti' is utterly captivating with nail-biting tension in the air and those scenes alone render the film worth checking out at least once. It is also worth noting how the choice to shoot the film in black and white really captures the starkness of the situation and turns the picturesque outskirts cottage where the game takes place into an eerie location.

This is a love story, a dark and morose love story. Its about the lengths that one brother will go to in order to deliver the other from a life of drudgery and uncertainty. A small deviation from honesty is answered with an introduction into a world of pain and suffering for the principal character. Blood sport is a realm of the lowest common denominator, for those whose lives have left them bereft of common decency. So they gamble on the misfortune of others in as intimate a manner as possible. I knew what was coming as the story evolved, yet it disappointed and saddened me nonetheless when the curtain closed. The tension that mounts in the movie is extreme. If you like a straight forward game of chance, you'll like this movie. Dark in the classic film noir style.

Carpenter Sébastien is hired by the mysterious house-owner Jean-Francois to fix his roof. When the house-owner suddenly dies, Sébastien finds a valuable letter that contains clear instructions.Géla Babluani's dark debut from modern day France about a young immigrant who takes a risky choice to help his family, opens as a classic film-noir and develops after the chronologies time-frame to a tight psychological thriller about a cynical underground milieu where the unknowing protagonist realizes that the consequences of his choice has forced him into a situation that he can only get out of by conquering death. The compassion, warmth and harmony Babluani suggests of in the character introduction is alienated after the point-of-no-return, and from here on out Géla Babluani depicts a hazardous gambling community where human worth means nothing and money everything.Promising Georgian-French director Géla Babluani was possibly inspired by 1940s American Film Noir and Robert Bresson's metaphysical dramas when he started making this formalistic art film that is associable with Juan-Carlos Fresnadillo's "Intacto" (2001). "Contestant 13" is vigorously filmed and photographed in a black-and-white color that increases the films cold realism, concentrates the plot and tones down the emotional aspects. The variations of long and short takes, the short and concise dialog and the frequent use of close ups intensifies the drama in this stylized character study, whole heartedly played by the director's debuting brother George Babluani. The misty background music and the minimal elements of humor decreases the apocalyptic mood in this tense feature film debut. This is 90 minutes in breath-taking excitement and observation of West-European art film.

To some degree, everyone understands that there are universes that run parallel to the more-or-less civilized reality in which most of us go about our daily affairs and that these parallel universes are often as near to us as the other side of a car door. Parallel realities in which various laws or social norms are ignored and in which everyone's general health and well-being aren't necessarily the top priority.And while the shock value of '13 Tzameti' will depend on any given viewer's understanding of the sharp difference in sensibility that will so often characterize the inhabitants of these alternate worlds, newcomer Géla Babluani's second film is nonetheless a compelling parable about the other side of the car door.It is rather a precipitous plunge into just such a parallel universe by a young French handyman that is chronicled in this picture's evenly-paced 93 minutes runtime. The handyman, Sébastien, is making repairs to a beach-front home in France that is owned by a man of some means who has just returned from a trip. But something is wrong: The man is in a state of near total exhaustion. The police are watching the mailbox and the owner's wife is fit to be tied. The only clue as to the man's considerable distress is a letter that arrives before the police can intercept it and which ends up in Sébastien's hands. In it, cash is promised to the recipient for following mysterious instructions requiring travel by train. When Sébastien's fee is jeopardized by the chaos, he endeavors to prove he is the world's stupidest Frenchman by pretending to be the intended recipient and following the instructions himself.Without giving away the form Sébastien's nightmare actually takes in the film, suffice it to say that it is stark indeed.A warped sense of accountability came to define the world of Enron's top officers when that company imploded.Al Capone's parallel universe of speak-easies can be described as one in which Prohibition didn't matter.In '13 Tzameti,' we encounter a culture of behavior more typical of the Roman Empire – one in which human frailty has become a matter for sport.And like the makers of 'The Blair Witch Project,' and 'The Deer Hunter,' what Babluani knows about the horror of stories like these is not the physical peril itself, but its embrace by the weakened and beaten minds that could once have been allied against it. That's what really gets your skin to crawling: collaboration.The French Resistance shaved the heads of Nazi collaborators after World War II and it is fitting that in this French film, the question of collaboration, ultimately, elevates the theme above one of a mere "ain't this awful?" Will Sébastien be a shaver or a shav-ee? A question made all the more important as we learn in the film's DVD release that the story is rooted in real-life accounts of actual events.Shot entirely in black and white, '13 Tzameti' occasionally feels like the graphic novel Frank Miller might have authored had he grown some sense for nuance: The more intense a scene gets, the higher the contrast. At its best, the effect is one of universality -- at worst, an unpolished amateurism.The director's young brother, George Babluani, plays Sébastien and this conceit could have cost the film its authenticity. Despite an expressive face that conveys an interesting mix of intensity and innocence, the younger Babluani is out-acted in nearly every scene that counts and especially by the more experienced Aurélien Recoing who has over 100 films to his credit. Perhaps it is by virtue of the fact that George is playing an inexperienced outsider in this story that he gets away with the performance he provides.Ultimately, what '13 Tzameti' does best is what so many good independent films do and that is to consider topics and themes that go unexamined in the mainstream market.At the very least, after watching this movie, you will think twice about which car doors in life you decide to open.This movie review by Erik Gloor