Saturn Bowling was written by Patricia Mazuy and Yves Thomas, and directed by Patricia Mazuy. It is about rising police officer Guillaume (Arieh Worthalter) who decides to reach out to his troubled half-brother, Armand (Achille Reggiani), and gift him with their father’s bowling alley after their father passes. This act of kindness will result in consequences he could never have predicted. 

The acting is great. My favorite performance is Frédéric van den Driessche‘s as Jean-Paul because it adds a deceptively uplifting edge to the mix. Things could have become excessively dreary without him. He is a form of relief, but he is not comic relief. He is an authority figure, but his brand of authority differs from either of the brothers. The major characters are well-developed. Even Guillame’s father feels like an important and present character because of his influence and baggage. The character relationships are good even though the major characters do not interact with each other often. The major characters exist in apogee to one another. The distance between the characters and when and why they choose to collide with one another is a major factor in these relationships. The dialogue grounds everything. It isn’t flowery or rhythmic, but it is realistic. Realism gives these filmmakers the ability to do artistic things without immediately taking me out of the scene and reminding me this is a movie.

Saturn Bowling is nearly two hours long. It uses this time to show the perspective of different characters, and I genuinely think it would be less effective if it didn’t. I am disappointed the resolution does not receive the same meticulous pacing as other segments. Conceptually, it is like they decided to race towards the credits. In action, it is fine. I wasn’t entirely satisfied, but Saturn Bowling did enough right that this one thing wasn’t going to skew my opinion. One of the reasons I found things to be as investing as they are is because of the sound design. The club sounds like you’re in a club. The bowling alley sounds like you’re in a bowling alley. If you’ve been to either, you know audibly these aren’t necessarily great experiences. These scenes are louder and more distracting than others, and I appreciate that. There is also the sound of violence. Visually, the violence here may be compared to many other films. Audibly, this is some of the most realistic-sounding violence I have ever heard. It is effective. The cinematography is great. This is where the fun is. This is where they get to stop being realistic and be stylistic, and it results in some visually appealing scenes. The effects are all practical, and they all look good. I won’t go into detail regarding most of the effects, but the blood is perfect. The make-up artists showed off. Everyone on the effects team knew what they were doing.

At its heart, Saturn Bowling is an incredibly dark dramatic thriller, but some other things are orbiting it. There are elements here that are fable-like. Animals are rather important to the movie, and not necessarily because they are physically there. Some scenes look and feel like a giallo. There’s a specific way giallo visually captures the surreal, the way scenes emote, that I feel is reflected in Saturn Bowling. It is a grim exploration of trauma, relationships, inheritance, authority, and nature. The experience feels like a witch’s brew of all these different things. The fact that it is so balanced and its story and characters are never lost in the mix is a triumph.