I guess you’re probably wondering the same thing I was wondering when I saw what this movie is about. How are they going to do it? How are they going to make a movie about a giant shark living in the river Seine which flows through Paris? Will the shark sprout legs and attack hedonistic Parisians while they’re smoking and drinking next to the river? Will it jump out of the water and eat them before returning to the safety of the river? Or will this be a case of Jaws in Paris? As you could probably guess, Under Paris indeed is basically Jaws but set in Paris with the River Seine replacing the sea.
The movie’s delivery is pitch-perfect, dead-serious characters trying to survive laughably outrageous situations. Only the French could get away with this type of combination. Add to this the usual social commentary of greedy city officials, youth fighting for the preservation of nature and you got yourself quite a movie. A definition of a mindless but entertaining shark movie extravaganza. It’s something to take your mind off things you’re currently obsessing over. The final touch is the connection to the Paris 2024 Olympics. The French government spent a whopping 1.5 billion dollars to clean up the river Seine building a huge waste water reservoir.
That reservoir can hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of polluted water. If you’re wondering if the actors actually swim in the Seine, no, they did not. These sequences were filmed in an open-air water tank in Alicante, Spain. And for the underwater scenes, they had to go all the way to Belgium. Now, let’s get back to the actual movie. First of all, the production values along with the cinematography and CGI are excellent. Under Paris looks awesome and this isn’t some cheap-ass shark movie you’re used to seeing on Sci-Fi channel.
Excuse me, Sy-Fy channel. That being said, I still yearn for real, I mean, mechanical sharks similar to the ones we saw in Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, for example. They have this nasty, visceral, and frightening vibe while the CGI sharks look kind of plastic and not that much threatening. Still, I want to emphasize that the quality of the special effects is great. It’s just that I much prefer the practical ones. The relatively unknown cast led by Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) and Nassim Lyes (Farang, also directed by Gans), did a solid job.
We will be following a retired scientist Sophia, who finds out that a shark that killed her husband ten years ago is back. It’s back in Paris actually and she learns this from Mika, an environmental activist who wants to save sharks. Soon dead bodies will start popping up and a particularly muscular member (pun intended) of the Parisian River Police will have to step in. The story is perfectly paced culminating in one hell of a finale I simply could not see coming. It was bloody glorious although quite reminiscent of The Meg. After all, you can clearly see they lifted the poster design from that movie as well.
However, I do have to admit that the middle part of the movie was a bit dull and uneventful. Mostly because we were just ticking off certain boxes and the character development was quite stereotypical. Under Paris is coming to us from none other than Xavier Gans. It would appear that our man comes in waves. The first movies to hit us were Frontière(s) and Hitman, followed by Cold Skin and The Crucifixion. His next movie The Guns of Christmas Past is currently in pre-production and it sounds a lot like Die Hard. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Director: Xavier Gens
Writers: Yannick Dahan, Maud Heywang, Xavier Gens
Cast: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant, Sandra Parfait, Aurélia Petit, Marvin Dubart
Fun Facts: Despite the huge earning potential of a shark summer blockbuster tied to the Paris 2024 Olympics, Gens could not find a single French producer for more than a year. He eventually managed to gain the interest of Netflix execs and this is how we got Under Paris.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13964390/
