The Other Laurens

The Other Laurens tells the story of twin brothers—there’s the successful François Laurens, who seems to have it all. He’s got the enormous wealth. The beautiful wife. The doting daughter. And then there’s Gabriel Laurens, who has to pretend his credit card is on the fritz so his niece can fill up his gas tank for him. Too bad François is the one who winds up murdered. Or was he? And was all his success we believed it to be?

Gabriel (Olivier Rabourdin), in true film noir fashion, is a down-on-his-luck private investigator with barely a dollar to his name. His brother’s death seems like a clear case of a drunk driving accident, but his niece Jade (Louise Leroy ) isn’t convinced. Her father didn’t drink. None of this adds up. She enlists Gabriel's services to find out what really happened. As Gabriel opens up the proverbial Pandora’s box, he finds himself confronting himself and his own past.

The plot itself is secondary to individual scenes. I know the film has an intentional style and vibe that harkens back to 1970s Neo Noirs like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and Arthur Penn’s Night Moves, but the near-total dismissal of coherence of the plot, in favor of allowing noir-inspired shenanigans to run amok, reminds me of the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. Even the title of it—here, referring to the OTHER brother, or in Lebowski’s case, the “big” one, the one with the money.

The problem is that I don’t believe that The Other Laurens is a strong enough movie in its individual scenes, or on overall vibe, to get away with eschewing a coherent plot. Far too often, the movie is boring. Director Claude Schmitz has a lot to say and instead of saying one thing elegantly, he allows his film to say all the things he wants, with little to no regard for how it will all unfold. The simple thrill in these kinds of movies is seeing the mystery unfold. We see the main character connect the dots. We get from point A to point B in surprising, unexpected ways. Up until the point Gabriel comes to understand the film’s big reveal, we’ve never been given any indication he’s good at his job. How everything snaps together feels rushed at best, and totally contrived at worst.

Worse yet, The Other Laurens dedicates a decent amount of screen time to shoe-horning in a personal connection Gabriel has to the events that unfolded on 9/11. This narrative decision is so unbelievably bad and ill-conceived that I couldn’t decide if Schmitz was making some sort of edgelord joke about the tragedy of that day or if it was a completely tone-deaf attempt at pathos. It reminded me of Phoebe Cates’s tragic monologue in Gremlins that toes the line between pitch-black humor and full-on tragedy. But whereas that monologue involved a dead Santa Claus, this involves showing actual footage of human beings meeting a tragic end. It is so mind-bogglingly bad that it colors the rest of the film. It occurs at just about the halfway point, too, and afterward, nothing is the same.

The first half of the film succeeds in piquing our interest in what’s about to happen and how this mystery will be unfurled before us. The second half, after the bizarre 9/11 reference, is a complete undoing of what the first half had set up before it. It felt like someone set up an intricate series of dominos to be knocked down, one by one, to create an incredible image, only to have someone else drunkenly stumble through the network of dominos, leaving some still standing, some thrown clear across the room. In the second half, whole plots are abandoned with payoffs occurring off-screen as a sort of too-cool-for-school to the conventions of storytelling.

The Other Laurens is one of the more frustrating films I’ve seen in a long time. I admire an ambitious failure, but the failure here is due to a lack of ambition.  

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Yellow Veil has put together an attractive package for The Other Laurens. The film and the special features are contained on a single-disc Blu-ray, housed in a standard case. The case itself features a reversible sleeve with alternate poster artwork on either side, by Brutal Posters. Inside the case is a 12-page booklet containing an in-depth essay on the film written by Dick Tomasovic, a Professor at the University of Liege.

While I may have been critical of the film itself (possibly overly so), that criticism does not extend to its technical specifications. The Other Laurens is a very attractive film, and the transfer here in 1080p high-definition video is amazing work all around. Somewhere near the first reel of the film, I couldn’t tell if the film was shot digitally, or if it was authentically filmed to give it that retro look, by going with 16mm film stock. I looked into at and according to IMDB, it was shot on an Ikonoskop D II digital camera with a super 16mm sized sensor, which gives it a very intentional look. I’m no expert, but I thought the video cinematography did a great job at emulating the look of film, without exaggerating it. Colors are gorgeous and pop with vibrancy. In nighttime scenes, the color palate favors the golden hues of streetlamps or open doorways.

The exterior nighttime scenes look the best. In one scene, as a motorcycle gang roars past the camera, their headlights bloom into something nearly extraterrestrial, reminding me of the scout ships in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film also benefits from on-location scenery and it works almost as a sort of travelogue film with stunning sights to behold in architecture and natural surroundings. From beginning to end, The Other Laurens looks fantastic.

The Other Laurens is no slouch in the sound department either. The Blu-ray comes with two DTS-HD MA sound mixes: 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo. I toggled back and forth and the stereo option is great if you only have a 2-channel soundbar, or you’re using your TV speakers, but if you have a proper surround sound setup, you’re going to want to use the 5.1 option.

Dialogue not only comes through strong and favored, but it has this rich timbre to it, in a way that feels warm and full. During a few talky scenes, I put my hand on the subwoofer and felt it pulsating throughout the conversation. Rear speaker activity is at a near-constant level: Ambient noise from street traffic, the chatter of a diner, birds chirping, ocean waves crashing, a gentle breeze. The surround sound mix does an incredible job and drawing us in and allowing us to be fully enveloped in it.

There aren’t a ton of features to be found on Yellow Veil’s Blu-ray release of The Other Laurens but existing fans should be happy with the inclusion of a booklet essay, audio commentary and a short film by the film’s director.

• Audio Commentary by Director Claude Schmitz, Director of Photography Florian Berutti and Composer Thomas Turine
• Short Film Nothing but Summer by Claude Schmitz (HD 34:58)
• Booklet Essay by Dick Tomasovic, Professor at the University of Liege

The Other Laurens may not have worked for me, but the disc itself represents incredible work from the team over at Yellow Veil. The video presentation is beautiful. The surround sound mix is organic and immersive. The special features help provide a deeper look into the film and broaden its audience’s understanding of it. Because of this, the Blu-ray is Worth A Look, as existing fans of the film will have plenty to gush over. For those who haven’t seen the film, prepare to be split on your reaction over it: You’ll either love it or be left cold by it.