The Translators | Dir: Régis Roinsard | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
French writer/director Régis Roinsard has crafted a claustrophobic Agatha Christie style thriller that keeps the audience guessing until the very end. There are many twists and turns in this fast-paced film that features a multinational cast of superb actors.
The suave and arrogant head of Angstrom Publishing, Eric Angstrom (Lambert Wiklson), has hired nine translators so he can release the final installment of the Deadalus trilogy simultaneously around the world and make a small fortune. Locked in a well-equipped and highly secure underground bunker for a month, their task is to translate ten pages a day.
Displaying stereotypical traits of their country, the four women consist of a Russian femme fatale Katerina (Olga Kurylenko); a rebellious Portuguese punk Telma (Maria Leite); a depressed Dane Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and a no-nonsense German, Ingrid (Anna-Maria Sturm). The male translators are a quiet Chinese Chen (Frédéric Chau); a flamboyant Italian Dario (Riccardo Scarmarcio); a philosophical Greek Konstantinos (Manolis Mavromatakis); a stuttering Spaniard, Javier (Edouardo Noriega) and a very young English fanboy Alex (Alex Lawther).
That’s a lot of characters to keep track of when the first ten pages are leaked online after the first day as Eric desperately tries to discover which of his translators has managed to break his tight security. Accusations are fired, and then bullets, as the tension in the bunker reaches a crucial point. Flashbacks and flash-forwards sprinkle clues but it is almost impossible to guess the full extent of the treachery.
Thrown into the mix of suspects is Eric’s extremely competent but mistreated personal assistant Rose-Marie Houei (Sara Giraudeau) and an old bookseller-turned-author Georges Fontaine (Patrick Bauchau). There’s also a very amusing and distracting heist sequence thrown into the last part of the film which just adds to the entertainment level of a film made to thrill cinema audiences.
The Translators is now screening at Luna Leederville.
Lezly Herbert
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