This entry revolves mainly around having watched Noël Mitrani's descriptively titled
The Kate Logan Affair less than a day removed from Nicolas Winding Refn's 80's throwback, gory-surprise electric synth-pumping opus in
Drive. Though this, admittedly, has nothing to do with the former--if, for whatever reason you are here, it isn't to read about Drive, a movie that has been discussed to death everywhere else.
Spoilers to follow, you twats:
Mitrani's film stars Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls fame and Laurent Lucas (a french dude whom I know nothing about) in a quiet, slow movie that flirts with turning contemplative but decidedly avoids treading said path in favor of telling the little tale of the budding relationship between an insecure young nooblet of a cop named Kate and an Insurance guy named Benoit travelling to Canada for business reasons, that goes horribly, horribly wrong.
The movie softly tackles plenty of issues in what feels like a succession of slice of life vignettes that sort of mesh themselves into a cohesive narrative. As things progress there are bits and pieces that can be gleamed pointing at who these two people are.
Benoit is a somewhat charming, dedicated, and educated fellow; he has a daughter back home in France along with a, for all we know, loving super-smart wife.
Kate, on the other hand, is a rookie police officer just fresh off the academy and, unlike Benoit, she's decidedly not faring as well on her end. Here is one of those rare aspects where pitch-perfect casting shines--Bledel is nowhere near believable as a cop on the beat, at all; and neither is Kate, who, on her part, is having the hardest of times dealing with the chore of everyday life at a job where she palpably feels like the butt of everyone else's joke.
Things start moving quickly enough in the story; Kate's chilling at a supermarket in her off-time presumably (buying a muffin this gal). She eyes Benoit leaving the place, and, mistaking him for a criminal, confronts him, nabs his ass, and forcefully has him show her his papers. When the air is cleared, Kate, all flustered, apologizes profusely and sends him on his way--Benoit, on his part, acts all nice and classy, rather nonchalant about the whole thing, really (first mistake of many he makes), before taking off.
Benoit is off to do his thing where he charms his way around business-related stuff (seminars, conferences, blah, blah, blah), and then returns to his motel where, lo-and-behold, Kate is waiting for him. She does the I-am-so-sorry dance again and, this time, offers him to have an "official police-apology beverage." He accepts, by the way.
This is the part where the romantic dramedy wheels start to come off, by the way.
Kate is a chatty cat, telling life stories about a sheisty relationship with her mother, the tragic death of her father, a cop, in the line of duty (after Benoit shows her a picture of his daughter)--she even proudly shows her a scar she got from an assailant from that one time she almost died, by the way. She is forward, charming, rather agreeable, and she's clearly got a fancy for the middle aged frenchman...or does she?
In the end, they say their goodbyes; Benoit returns to his dingy motel room and Kate...goes who knows where, for she returns some while later holding a whiskey bottle, knocks on his door and then he, all awkwardly, shoos her away, but then he immediately changes his mind and calls her again anyways and...then they bone. And then she leaves.
She returns home, where we learn that her dad not only is quite alive but he's also a deadbeat who grates at her nerves and asks her for money--she kicks him out. She also has husky dogs that she kicks around, too (dafuq??). Seems like Kate has some issues...
Later, the next morning she shows up at Benoit's room, where he tells her that they can't see each other again--she shuts his mouth with a kiss and pretty much leads the guy into auto pilot from there. Later she is calm-scolded by a fellow police officer about her car having a flat tire, which she graciously acknowledges--though, this, weirdly, has quite the effect on her. Then she spends the rest of the evening with Benoit over a hotdog.
They bone again. After some brief post coital chat, Kate, whose gun box jammed shut and is still carrying even though she shouldn't, shows Benoit her gun and, very gently, and without using the words "fucking pussy," goads him into taking her gun and practice a mock aim-and-shoot scenario on an alarm clock.
Benoit shoots. The bullet hits a wall.
Suddenly, stunningly-cute but dog-abusive Kate loses her shit at the mere idea of the police being able to trace the slug lodged on the wall. They try to remove it but it is to no avail, it is in deep, and someone has called the cops, already, and Kate convinces the bemused frenchman that they have to scram before they get there.
What follows is a slow, jarring, and at times chaotic mini-odyssey in the form of the interactions between a foreigner not totally in command of the English language and--if you have paid attention to the subtle clues--a cherub-faced sociopath with a sweet tooth.
Kate starts slowly unraveling as she keeps trying very, very hard to make herself feel in control. From here on out, she oscillates between caustic bouts of paranoia and belligerence in her attempts to devise a "strategy" that will get them (and by them she means
her) out of the mess they are in.
What happens next is Kate showing, not only that she's bad at being a cop like everyone else thinks, but also something else: that she's willing to manipulate her companion through any means she deems necessary to forward her doomed cause; these include creepy intimacy moments, blackmail, misleading capitultion, and, ultimately, cold blooded murder. All in her mad-dash to save face--she states that it all is about keeping her job, but her issues clearly run deeper than that.
And saving face she must. It is here when one realizes that Kate probably orchestrated the whole meeting with him and asking him out, all in a probable paranoid overture of affection so as to keep him happy--and quiet--'till he was gone, before growing somewhat fond of the guy but, ultimately, deciding he was expendable after the mess she got herself in.
Once the deed is done, and some self-inflicted wounds later, Kate chokes tears away as she recounts the significant events of the film to fellow officers, twisting each and every one of them to her benefit. She turns Benoit's nightmarish ordeal into an account of her graze with death at the hands of a livid french rapist/kidnapper--she's pretty good at it, too!
The only thing eating away at her is whether or not she left any loose ends, and, in the final scene, it is revealed she did not.
The funny thing? She gets away with it all. She even remains in pin-point victim mode when confronting Benoit's shocked wife who, in the end, ends up seeing it Kate's way, who subliminally guilts her into it.
Not only does she win in each and every way, but she gets mildly famous and makes everyone in her small town feel sympathy for her while at it.
The story ends with Kate, happily heading off to an uncertain but decidedly brighter future than in the beginning of the film, faintly hinting that she has found her vocation: full-time sociopath. And with a licence to carry.
That is, somehow, the odd the story of this little movie.
Kate Logan may not be Lecter-smart, or Ripley-hip, or Dexter Morgan-fun, but she is goddamned effective and deliberate as she daftly plots in silence once the pieces start falling into place that allow for her to do so. She is exactly what those characters would be if stripped to their bare essentials and had to do without their super human levels of cunning. The incessant cascade of her character flaws make her everything but boring.
It should be said that what truly drew me into this film was Bledel's interpretation of sociopath Kate's sweet-tooth. This is a woman who has a fondness for muffins, and who gets scolded by her abductee for settling for strawberry milk (no chocolate milk in the store) instead of water--what a deliciously despicable character that, sadly, won't be explored further. Ever.
