Seul contre tous

In Seul contre tous we again encounter the horse butcher from Carne, Noé’s mid-length feature that was screened in Rotterdam in 1992. This unpleasant character, to put it mildly (played by the inimitable Philippe Nahon), has just completed a jail term for his violence against the man he suspected of raping his dumb and mentally retarded daughter. His butcher’s shop in Lille has been shut and he is unemployed. Living with a bleached vixen and her mother, his dreams of a new shop soon fade. After a fight with the very pregnant blond he heads into the night, a pistol in his hand. From that moment on, we are surrendered to his monologue intérieur, in which he points his arrows at a society that he no longer understands. The man is filled with hatred, vindictiveness, obscenities, racism, sexism and a lot of other politically incorrect ideas that sometimes seem to have a nightmarish and apparently inevitable logic. Without compassion for the spectator, but not without (black) humour, Seul contre tous drags the viewer to a strange happy ending. Noé shot his provocative, powerfully cut film in Cinemascope like Carne. Before the dramatic climax dawns, sensitive spectators are given thirty seconds to leave the cinema.