The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

Loup-Garou by R. B. Russell

I first saw the film,

Loup-garou, in 1989, in a little arts cinema in the centre of Birmingham. I had driven there for a job interview and, as usual, I had allowed far more time for the journey than was required. I had reasoned that it should take me two hours to travel there, to park, and to find the offices of the firm of accountants where I desperately wanted a position. The interview was at two-thirty, so I intended to leave home at midday. I had worked it all out the night before, but then became concerned that the traffic might be against me, and I decided to allow another half-hour for the journey. That morning I checked my map, but no car parks were marked on it and so I added yet another half-hour to the time I would allow myself. Leaving at eleven o'clock seemed prudent, but I was ready by half-ten and, rather than sit around the house worrying, I decided to set out.

I know my nervousness about travelling is a failing, but I've always lived and worked in this small provincial town and it is not a day-to-day problem. On this occasion it was made very obvious to me just how irrational my fear of being late for appointments really was; the traffic was light and the roads clear and I was in the centre of Birmingham by a quarter to twelve. I found a car park with ease and was immediately passed a ticket by a motorist who was already leaving, despite paying to stay the whole day. I parked, and as I walked out on to the street I could see the very offices that I wanted directly opposite. I had two and a half hours to kill.

For no reason other than to pass the time I looked into the foyer of the cinema which was immediately adjacent to the car park. Pegged up on a board was the information that a film called

Loup-garou was about to start, and that it would be finished by two o'clock. It seemed the perfect solution to my problem.

I doubt if there were more than five or six people in the cinema. It was small and modern and the seat into which I settled myself was not too uncomfortable. I was in time to watch the opening credits slowly unfold. The sun was rising over a pretty, flat countryside, and the names of the actors, all French, slowly faded in and out as the light came up over fields and trees. It was beautifully shot, and a simple, haunting piano piece repeated quietly as the small cast were introduced, and finally the writer and director, Alain Legrand. I noted the name carefully from the information in the foyer when I left the cinema two hours later.

The film was incredibly slow, but each scene was so wonderfully framed, and the colours so achingly vivid that it was almost too lovely to watch. The sunlight, a numinous amber, slanted horizontally across the landscape as we were introduced to the hero, a boy who was walking from his home in the village to a house only a half-mile distant. The camera was with him every step of the way. There was a quiet voice-over, in French, that was unhurried enough for me to understand it. The boy was kicking a stone and noting that he had a theory that four was a perfect number, as exemplified by a square. Therefore, if he kicked this stone, or tapped the rail of a fence, he had to do it three more times to make it perfect. If, by some unfortunate mischance, he should repeat the action so that it was done, say, five times, then he would have to make it up to sixteen-four times four. The penalty for getting that wrong was huge; the action would need to be repeated again and again to make it up to two hundred and fifty-six, or sixteen times sixteen.

It was a rambling dialogue, and a silly little notion such as any young lad might have, but I was immediately struck that it had been an affectation that I myself had had as a teenager. Predisposed toward our hero on the strength of this, I was rather looking forward, as he was, to seeing his sweetheart, if the director would ever allow him to arrive at her house. When he eventually knocked at the door, predictably we had to wait for the mother to answer it, and for him to be shown into the comfortable, dark kitchen. He had to wait, of course, for the girl who, he was told, was brushing her hair upstairs and would not be long. He talked to the mother, stroked a cat and looked out of the window. Finally the object of his affections descended the stairs.

At this point I sat forward in my seat. The young girl looked exactly as my wife, Yvo

They took their time, of course, in going outside to where the sun was now higher in the sky. I felt a frisson as they sat close together on the bench outside the door, and, unseen by the mother, he tenderly kissed the nape of her neck as she bent down to look into a box of buttons. I marvelled at the film-maker's art. As the boy's lips brushed the girl's skin she slid her hand through the buttons in a way that was incredibly sensual. Then she picked out a heavy green one, shaped like an apple, and asked him if he knew that it had once belonged to the costume of a famous clown?

Up until this point I had enjoyed the coincidences I had found in the film, but this was stretching them too far. My mother had also had a very similar button in a sewing box, which was also said to have once belonged to a well-known clown. I did not know what to make of its appearance in the film.

The hero and heroine then decided to take a walk through the fields, talking of love and their future. And then, in the woods, there was the most delicately handled love-making scene, shown to us through carefully concealing trees. When he eventually walked home we had another voice-over where he declared his love for the girl whom he inevitably calls Yvo

After a few more meetings between the two of them, the only scenes involving several other actors are played out on a day of celebration; their last at school. Here another character is introduced, an older boy who clearly has an interest in the heroine. I immediately cast around for the equivalent character in my youth. There had been jealousies in my relationship with Yvo

The film then changed in style. In an instant the long, beautifully framed scenes from a single static position were replaced by abrupt, short images from what appeared to be a hand-held camera, and which were presumably meant to be from our hero's viewpoint. It conveyed the black rage within him. He was retracing the journey to Yvo