ALLELUIA

Gloria is a woman in her forties, divorced and with a young daughter. Her life is rather monotonous and depressing. Skeptical but encouraged by a friend, she decides to meet Michel, known from a dating site: it's love at first sight. Despite the man's attempts to deceive her, the devotion Gloria feels for him is so great that it leads her to support his immoral and deceitful behavior, to the point of becoming his accomplice. In a spiral of passion and madness, their lives will change forever. With "Alleluia", Fabrice Du Welz closes a perfect triangle started with "Calvaire", an atypical horror film mistakenly classified by many as torture porn, and continued with the dramatic and grueling "Vinyan". The Belgian director is undoubtedly one of the most prominent names in European cinema – not exclusively horror – thanks to his creative power and peculiar technical skills demonstrated in each of his works. The filmmaker's greatest merit is having shaped a style that is absolutely personal and unique in its kind, making any attempt at comparison difficult (and even useless). "Alleluia", more than a film in the strict sense of the term, represents a painful experience not only visual but also and above all spiritual, a descent into the abyss that leaves an indelible mark. As in every film by Du Welz, here too, the meticulous work of character development plays a fundamental role in conveying the film's message. Excellent is the performance of Lola Duenas as the hysterical Gloria, whose job (preparing the dead) reflects an empty and sad existence, and who will find in Michel an opportunity for redemption to pursue at all costs (literally). The darkly handsome male lead is played by a brilliant and charismatic Laurent Lucas (already the protagonist of "Calvaire"), whose cunning and dishonest nature is the result of a terrible past, marked by incest and violence. The two lovers, depicted with caricatured and animalistic traits, metaphorically and without limits manifest some of the true essence of man. Embracing the most spontaneous and primitive instinctual impulses and extinguishing every glimmer of morality and reason, they will find themselves prisoners in a world of their own creation, where the chilling reality will clash fiercely with the illusion of happiness. The plot (inspired by the story of the "Honeymoon Killers" Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck) unfolds through slow but functional rhythms for understanding the nature and behaviors of the two characters. The deliberately stretched timings allow Du Welz to build an immense imaginative castle that exploits a disturbing and aesthetically magnificent staging, immersed in a surreal atmosphere that serves as the perfect backdrop to the murderous deeds of our protagonists. Many are the dreamlike moments, emphasized by a background stillness (sometimes really unsettling and suggestive) that involves a meticulous and versatile direction, capable of softening – albeit in a discontinuous way – the narrative heaviness. The criminal and atrocious actions that occur – with some redundancy – are nothing more than the material transposition of an obsessive and morbid feeling declined in possession, revenge, and egoism. And so, minute by minute, the viewer finds themselves trapped in a whirlwind of devastating emotions, passively and uncomfortably undergoing the identification with the characters. By reducing the context and stripping it of the extremism that makes it effective in cinematic fiction but unlikely in reality, all of us can identify to varying degrees with Gloria and Michel, and it is perhaps the awareness of this that makes the film so ruthless and brutal. The work was certainly not conceived to entertain: to fully appreciate it and to grasp its infinite nuances, the right disposition of mind is necessary. In conclusion, "Alleluia" is a hallucinatory journey through the desolate lands of drama, loneliness, and betrayed hope; an infernal dance between hate and love. A sick and suffering vision really difficult to forget. Review originally published on the blog M'illumino di Horror