Under Paris
Marine biologist and shark expert Sophia (Bérénice Bejo) loses her husband and her team after “Lilith”, an abnormally large mako shark thy are tracking, unexpectedly attacks them in the Pacific Ocean. Several years later, a still-traumatised Sophia is approached by an eco-vigilante group lead by headstrong Mika (Léa Léviant), with the stunning revelation that Lilith has found her way to Paris and the Seine: with local river police Sgt Adil (Nassim Lyes), they must confront the terrifying possibilities of what this means.
I’m caught between thinking very little of Under Paris, and thinking rather a lot of it: it’s been a while since I’ve had trouble formulating a final opinion on a film like I have for this. On the face of it it’s a by-the-numbers animal-attack thriller, another in a long line of films trying, and mostly failing, to live up to the paradigm shift in cinema that was Jaws. This one’s hook is that it’s taking place in the Seine and in the catacombs of Paris, so it’s got that at least, but when it comes right down to it it’s still the same old tropes of a giant underwater predator looing out of the darkness to munch on unsuspecting people. But it is in terms of its environmental message, and especially in terms of its ending, that Under Paris actually demonstrates an ability to take some risks and to be daring, in a way that I really was not expecting at all.
As an animal-attack thriller, it’s OK. The usual notes abound, and if you’re the kind of person who finds enjoyment in seeing people getting stalked and then ripped apart by sharks, you’ll find plenty within Under Paris to sate your lust for underwater gore. The characters are largely threadbare, with the usual kind of trauma and tortured backstories, with at least one monologue about the past that will make you long for the genius of the UUS Indianapolis speech. There’s an arrogant uncaring mayor too, in case you were fearful that Under Paris just isn’t aping Spielberg enough, and with that there is also a lengthy, and increasingly incomprehensible, section where characters have to prove the very obvious shark very obviously exists. The truth is that since Jaws did this kind of thing at such a spectacular level, any subsequent effort to attempt to replicate that same sense of thrill is going to suffer in comparison: this whole idea was done almost to perfection nearly 50 years ago, and no one has ever come close since. That element of mediocrity is reflected in the cast, who are only OK and nothing more, with Bejo and Lyes spending most of their time trying to balance a thousand yard stare with being an actual human character, and Léviant probably doing the best work as an insufferable holier-than-thou ecowarrior who of course is wrong about everything.
But, but, but. Under Paris actually does have signs of a brain, employed when it comes to the entire idea of environmentalism. The opening sequence takes place in the great Pacific garbage patch, and a consistent visual theme of manmade pollutants in the water is a serious throughline. It’s made achingly clear that the actions of Lilith are at least partly caused by human action, and that humanity as a whole is probably unready for the kind of consequences such action will bring (the allegory here is extreme, but these kind of films wok best with such extreme allegory). There’s a very direct attack on the political class of France, who use the Olympics as a shield to deflect accusations that they aren’t doing enough genuine work in terms of environmentalism (recent stories about efforts to detoxify the Seine seem rather relevant). Far more than any of that, the film takes an unexpected stand against what I suppose I would call gesture environmentalism. The Mika character is the head of “Save Our Seas”, essentially an eco-vigilante group of would-be ecowarriors and stereotypical hackers, who end up being portrayed as witness cretins, so obsessed with crafting a media moment and creating a viral sensation whereby saving a single shark corresponds with saving the oceans, that they end up willingly going into the literal maw. It’s important to note that the film is very much pro-environment in its politics, but I did kind of appreciate its willingness to turn such figures, would be Thunberg’s who don’t actually want to do the heard work, into quasi-antagonists.
The other thing is the ending, which is interesting to put it mildly. I want to choose my words carefully here so as to not give away too many details, but I appreciated how Under Paris attempts to upend the usual formula for the end of these kinds of animal attack movies. It maintains the throughline of human action having unintended consequences in a spectacular way, and at the concluding point does not feel compelled to do the usual thing or give the audience the kind of typical satisfaction that they might expect. Instead they go in a very different and very daring direction, one that certainly has elements of setting up a sequel that we don’t really need, but which otherwise really marks Under Paris out as something fundamentally different, something pessimistic and cynical about how humanity is going to deal with the fallout of the climate crisis.
It looks OK, the kind of film I’d imagine where a lot of the budget has presumably already gone into making sure that the myriad of underwater sequences come out looking alright and suitably claustrophobic, before they even get into the necessities of a CGI shark (no one ever seems to want to do a Spielberg in that department anymore). Said CGI shark could look a littler better, especially in any scene where it is required to share space with actual people and actual environments. In such instances things start to look more than a little ropey, and I suppose the small screen experience isn’t helping there either. And it’s really only at the end that Under Paris starts to get inventive with its cinematography, such as in the manner that things really go bananas in the City of Lights in the finale, with most everything up to that point drawn and copied from animal attack films of yesteryear.
So, I am very much in two minds about Under Paris. The majority of it really is uninspiring stuff, the kind of Jaws-knockoff that you will have seen before multiple times, with ineffective performances from the cast, misuse of CGI and an inability to take risks when it comes to telling the majority of a story that revolves around a giant shark attacking people. But Under Paris does find redemption, in the way that it tailors a very specific message of environmentalism that serves as both clarion call generally and criticism for the “do-something” brigade who are probably hindering more than helping, and in the way that it chooses to round off its story. For those reasons, I feel compelled to think better of Under Paris than I otherwise was probably going to, and I suppose for that it is also worth a recommendation.
(All images are copyright of Netflix).
Never Felt Better 