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With its spine-chilling sequences, Vertige touches a new high
NoT to be mistaken for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic Vertigo (with James Stewart and Kim Novak, who died shortly after making the film), this Vertige is a French version, which deals with the exploits of a group of teenagers on a high trail in the Croatian mountains. The other title is High Lane. For one thing, the heights are chilling and cinematographer Nicholas Massart goes to town with some breath-taking visuals. Sadly, they are not matched by an imaginative enough screenplay by Abel Perry and as director he has to chug along with only flashes of suspense.
The actors, mostly unknown, go through the motions with little or no conviction and after a promising start, it just disintegrates with the psychotic killer being a sort of convenient character to make up for a the lack of imagination. Neither is the end far from convincing when it runs out of ideas. Or raw stock. Or both. The group of five is made up of Chloe (Fanny Valette), Lole (Johan Libereau), Guiliame (Raphael Lenglet), Karine (Maud Wyler) and Chloe’s ex Fred (Nicholas Giraud). The mountains have been shut for repairs but the leader Guiliane seems to have ignored this aspect. Hence they are in for a whole load of trouble. That Fred is keen on making it up with Chloe leads to a love triangle with Lole and nuances of this comes across during the adventure. Lole, who is the most timid of the lot, manages to find courage in due time. But then arrows keep flying to indicate a foreign element. Then folks keep vanishing like the fabled 10 little nigger boys. It all builds up well till the halfway mark. Then it peters off, accompanied by some gory scenes, which the Censors deem to have overlooked. This French version is
dubbed but some of the lines are not translated. If one is looking for
thrills and spills and some spine-chilling sequences, this Vertige
is surely a new high and well worth watching despite its failings. If
only it were better scripted.
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