Well that was a whole load of nothing.
The blurb to this film makes it look quite interesting, a largely powerless figurehead of the French government in Tahiti, part of French Polynesia, has to manage rising tensions between the indigenous population and some recently stationed naval officers as rumours swirl that nuclear tests will resume. For those of you too disgustingly young to remember, back in the 90s, France thought it would be a good thing to test its nuclear weapons in its colonial territories, and decided, yes, an island paradise with coral reefs and verdant rainforests, teeming with life, would be the best place to do it. A repeat of that would not be welcomed by almost anybody.
How you make a movie with stakes this high boring as fuck I do not know. Well, I do, first you make it almost 3 hours long! It’s a thriller, meant to be. That means tension, that means pacing. Pacifiction is soporifically slow. I struggled to stay awake and more than once felt myself losing that battle. Baggy as fuck. Just 20 miles of nothing. It felt like the story was taking place in real time. It was just interminable.
And there is absolutely no need! This story doesn’t have that many moving parts. There’s the naval officers, the indigenous citizens’ council, the folk that work in the hotel nightclub, two shady businessmen, and a guy who claims to have lost his passport. That’s not that much to keep track of. So when I tell you I have no idea what happened in this film, it’s not because it’s too complicated to follow. It is because there was nothing to follow. The setup of the film is that nuclear tests might be about to resume, and that is literally where the plot stays until the very last scene of the movie.
And there is no complexity or nuance to anything you’re shown. The main character is an obnoxious, smarmy blowhard, bristling with toxic masculinity and colonial paternalism, lurching from one obvious shakedown for gossip to another, all utterly ineffective. The admiral is in the exact same mold, and only at odds with him because of the need to maintain military secrets. Meanwhile the indigenous folk are just trying to live their lives, but make it clear in no uncertain terms there will be hell to pay if they irradiate their home. White men have a dick measuring contest at the expense of indigenous lives and land, so far so predictable.
I would love to say “and then”. But there is no ‘and then’. The main character makes an unbelievable amount of monologues that tell you nothing other than he is a gassy windbag. Like, you know how in the book of Pride and Prejudice, Austen insists of transcribing every word of Mr. Collins’s long and tedious lectures? Exactly that. And after the umpteenth time, you are just like, can’t we just skip this?
And that feeling stays with you for almost all the film. I kept asking myself, “Why this scene? What’s it for?” and the honest answer is nothing. So much time spent and nothing conveyed, not plot, not tension, not movement, not anything at all.
It was so absent of any plot or pacing that I actually begin to think at one point, “Wait, is this maybe a comedy, and I’m just not getting it? Is the useless bumbling bureaucrat stuck in perpetual fail mode meant to be funny?” But I fear I was searching for some intended satisfaction for the audience that just wasn’t there.
The one and only thing I will say for this film is its main female lead is trans and it’s never mentioned. Just isn’t commented on. She’s just allowed to exist, like any other character in the film. Which shouldn’t be noteworthy, but is, given how few times trans women get leading roles that aren’t primarily focused on being trans, or at all really.
I cannot recommend this film. It had me praying for nuclear armageddon just so the film would end.