Black Box (Boîte noire, France-Belgium 2021)

A terrific paranoia thriller, Black Box emerged in France at the end of lockdown in 2021 and got lost to some extent in the backlog of releases. Apart from festival screenings it hasn’t been seen in the UK until its recent appearance on BBC2 and subsequent slot on BBC iPlayer, where it is available for several months. It is also available in many territories, streamed on Amazon and other streamers. It’s definitely worth catching – unless that is you are planning to catch a plane anytime soon! The title refers to the popular name for the CVR – the cockpit voice recorder and data recorder on an aircraft – the one thing expected to survive an air crash.

The narrative begins with an airliner in flight over the Alps on a journey between Dubai and Paris Charles de Gaulle and then we travel through the aircraft to see the CVR and we know that a crash is imminent. We then cut to a young analyst at the BEA (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile) who is analysing a helicopter crash with his boss. The young man appears to be zealous in his work and is convinced more work is needed on the crash. His boss thinks the cause of the crash is clear and effectively dismisses him. The young man goes back to his desk in an open plan office and realises that there has been a major crash – a new airliner an Atrian 800 with 300 passengers on board.

This is a paranoia thriller for the analyst Mathieu Vasseur played by the gifted Pierre Niney and also a narrative of commercial and institutional corruption. There are five main organisations involved – the aircraft manufacturer Atrian, the BEA, the airline ‘European Airways’ (and iys pilots), the company providing the security system for the aircraft and the government agency certificating the specific aircraft model. They all have an interest in what caused the crash and they all might be called to account or suffer financially if they have in any way contributed to the crash. This includes BEA if its analysis is flawed and causes trouble for one or more of the other agencies. It’s a good set-up for a thriller since the personnel all know each other and may have experience of employment of any of the organisations. Mathieu’s wife Noémie (Lou De Laâge) is actually in the process of moving from the Air Safety Certification body to the aircraft manufacturer Atrian. Mathieu’s marriage is another potential source of melodrama – will Noémie support him if he goes against his boss and pursues the investigation of the crash? Can he trust her?

In the event, Mathieu is soon officially back on the job when his boss goes missing. The head of BEA (André Dussollier) invites him to take over the investigation. As well as his determination to find answers, Mathieu has extremely sensitive hearing and is highly skilled in analysing the CVR material. But the danger is that his single-mindedness might go too far. I won’t spoil how the investigation works out. If you are any kind of technophobe, this may not be the thriller for you. It’s another of those narratives with lots of password code-breaking and the transfer of files between devices and computers, phones, satnavs etc. as well as studying sound waves – all happening immediately of course. On the other hand, it is very stylish in the blues, greys and whites of buildings in steel and glass and aircraft in gleaming white. Towards the end of the narrative it gets into a very exciting chase and this isn’t an art movie – there is definitely an ending.

I’m not very familiar with the writer-director Yann Gozlan but he was one of the writers on Scribe (France-Belgium 2016) which I thought was quite clever and original and also a sort of paranoia thriller. There are some similarities to the Isabelle Huppert starrer, La syndicaliste (France-Germany 2022) that did get a release earlier this year and I can think of another two or three French films which deal with various kinds of moral, ethical, political or criminal actions in large organisations. I’m not sure why this seems a particular French specialism. This one does in a way seem to be the most ‘of the moment’ and it does raise some rather worrying questions about AI and computer systems.

Pierre Niney is very good and I’ve written about him on three previous films, Yves Saint Laurent (2014), Frantz (2016) and L’odysseé (2016). Lou De Laâge is also good, but a little under-used I think. She was the star of the wonderful Anne Fontaine film Les innocentes (France-Poland 2015).I’m not sure why potential UK distributors passed up on this one, unless the sales company was asking too much for it. It does look ripe for a remake, but I hope not. This French film does everything Hollywood could do with such a property. I was amused by the film’s very ‘national’ focus. European aviation has centred around the Airbus, a joint French-British-German-Spanish operation with further interests in many parts of the world. We are all responsible!