SATURN BOWLING - Mark Reviews Movies

Saturn Bowling, Dark Star Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 28, 2023

The dead man's two sons are hunters, as their old man was but in different ways than each other and the father. Guillaume (Arieh Worthalter), one half of the sibling protagonists of Saturn Bowling, is a police detective, searching for clues and hunting for suspects in murder investigations. His half-brother Armand (Achille Reggiani), who shares his father's name but not by either's choice, also hunts, albeit on the other side of the law and society.

Despite their similarities to the father, both of these men have rebelled against him in their own ways, too, but co-writer/director Patricia Mazuy's movie is about the genetic or psychological allure that pulls Guillaume and Armand back toward him. It revolves around a bowling alley, which the senior Armand owned and operated until his death, that Guillaume has inherited but has no interest in running.

As a favor to the brother who was ignored by the father in life and left without any inheritance after the old man's death, he offers it to Armand, who's currently homeless, working in exchange for a place to sleep, and making a little cash by doing favors for strangers. There's something else about Armand, if the way he stares at the bodies of women while holding an umbrella for them is any indication. Maybe he's just lonely, but the father who ignored him and whom he hated in return was a big game hunter, after all.

This movie is a bit of a mystery—not in its content, which becomes a straightforward thriller about the hunt for a serial killer, but in its intentions. Everything important seems to be right there on the surface—from the revelation of the murderer right when the killings start, to Guillaume's hunt for whoever is leaving dead bodies in a local cemetery, to Armand's own realization that he is much more like the father who was gone from his life and whom he now wants to forget. It's just that something seems to be missing, though—something that matches the fraternal and paternal subtext that's right there and elevates the material above the formulaic trappings into which it so quickly falls.

As a thriller, it is somewhat fascinating and unnerving, because we see the killer at work (The first murder makes such an awful impact that we don't need to see the others), have an uncomfortable sense of why he does what he does, and know how close Guillaume is to finding him. As a character study of these two brothers and the ways in which they reject but live up to the example of their father, Mazuy and Yyves Thomas' screenplay is much more interested in the two men's own hunting processes than in digging beneath the intriguing but superficial connections the three men share. Saturn Bowling, then, is thoughtful, but it comes up short in providing much insight into those thoughts.

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