''Under the Sand'' (french: Sous le sable, ) is a 2000 French
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
directed and written by
François Ozon
François Ozon (; born 15 November 1967) is a French film director and screenwriter.
Ozon is considered one of the most important modern French filmmakers. His films are characterized by aesthetic beauty, sharp satirical humor and a free-wheeli ...
. The film was nominated for three
César Awards
The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Min ...
and was critically well received. It stars
Charlotte Rampling and
Bruno Cremer
Bruno Jean Marie Cremer (6 October 1929 – 7 August 2010) was a French actor best known for portraying Jules Maigret on French television, from 1991 to 2005.
Origins
Bruno Cremer was born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, in the eastern suburbs ...
.
Cast
*
Charlotte Rampling as Marie Drillon
*
Bruno Cremer
Bruno Jean Marie Cremer (6 October 1929 – 7 August 2010) was a French actor best known for portraying Jules Maigret on French television, from 1991 to 2005.
Origins
Bruno Cremer was born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, in the eastern suburbs ...
as Jean Drillon
*
Jacques Nolot
Jacques Nolot (; born 31 August 1943) is a French actor, screenwriter and film director.
Life and career
Jacques Nolot was born on 31 August 1943, Marciac, Gers, a small village in Southwest France. A fragile child, Nolot was doted upon by his m ...
as Vincent
*
Alexandra Stewart as Amanda
*
Pierre Vernier
Pierre Vernier (19 August 1580 at Ornans, Franche-Comté (at that time ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs, now part of France) – 14 September 1637, same location) was a French mathematician and instrument-inventor. He was the inventor and epony ...
as Gérard
*
Andrée Tainsy as Suzanne
Plot
Marie is an English professor at a Parisian university. She has been happily married to Jean for 25 years. They vacation in the
Landes, where his family has a house. At the beach, he goes for a swim while she sunbathes and later falls asleep. He never returns. There are no witnesses to any accident, and his body cannot be found; he may have committed suicide, he may have drowned in an accident. Marie does not accept his death, and she keeps seeing him (perhaps an apparition) after her return to Paris.
Marie begins an affair, even while she denies her husband's death, though she receives a call from the Landes police, saying a body had been found in a fisherman's net. Her friends are worried about her mental health, and when her lover offers her his help, she says he can't measure up to Jean, and rejects him. When visiting Jean's mother, who lives in a nursing home, she tells her that Jean may have killed himself; her mother in law rejects that, and says he probably left her because he was bored with her, and because, she says, she could not give him children. Finally, she goes to Landes to meet with the local officials. She is told he probably drowned while struggling with the undertow. The body, however, has spent so much time under water that it is putrefied and cannot be easily identified; a genetic test shows 90% correspondence with his mother, and the dental records seem to match as well. The lack of any past occurrence of fractures stop them from matching through skeletal analysis. She insists on seeing the body and reacts with horror. They found a watch as well: she denies that it his. When she goes back to the beach where he disappeared, she sees him in the distance and runs toward him or what she believes is him.
Production
The film was shot in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
and in the
Landes department including
Lit-et-Mixe
Lit-et-Mixe (; oc-gsc, Lit e Micse) is a commune in the Landes department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in south-western France.
The François Ozon film Sous le sable was set in Lit-et-Mixe.
See also
*Communes of the Landes department
The followin ...
,
Mimizan-Plage beach and at
Saint-Julien-en-Born
Saint-Julien-en-Born (; oc-gsc, Sent Julian de Bòrn) is a commune in the Landes department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Landes department
The following is a list of the 327 communes of ...
.
Awards
''Sous le sable'' was nominated for
Best Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
César Awards 2002. It also earned
Best Director Best Director is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards. It may refer to:
Film awards
* AACTA Award for Best Direction
* Academy Award for Best Director
* BA ...
and
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...
César nominations for Ozon and Rampling.
Reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has a rating of 93% based on 73 critics, with an
average rating
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...
of 7.5/10.
The Swedish filmmaker
Ingmar Bergman admired ''Sous le sable'', claimed that he watched the film several times.
The film was listed as ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''s Critic's Pick by
A. O. Scott, who said that "Ozon gives the movie to Ms. Rampling, whose performance is like a perfectly executed piano étude".
''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
''s
Derek Elley called the film "An exquisite reflection on personal bereavement", and called Charlotte Rampling's performance as "career-best".
He then went on saying that "''Under the Sand'' reps a hard commercial sell but could unearth solid niche business with critical support and devoted distrib
tion
A tigon (), tiglon () (portmanteau of ''tiger'' and ''lion''), or tion () is the Hybrid (biology), hybrid offspring of a male tiger (''Panthera tigris'') and a female lion (''Panthera leo''). ".
[
Marjorie Baumgarten of '']The Austin Chronicle
''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...
'' called film's director "a rare talent", while Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum (born July 5, 1952) is an American film critic. She joined ''Entertainment Weekly'' as a film critic in the 1990s and remained there until February 2013.
Career
She has been featured on CNN, co-hosted '' Siskel & Ebert at the Mov ...
of ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...
'' awarded the film with a "B+" score and called Rampling a "magnificent, coolly alluring fifty-something siren".
According to Ed Gonzalez of '' Slant Magazine'', " 'Under the Sand''is fraught with all sorts of erotic displacements and rituals of denial".
References
External links
*
NY Times review
{{AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Foreign Film
French drama films
2000 drama films
2000 films
Films directed by François Ozon
Films shot in Paris
2000s French-language films
2000s French films