In the age of superhero films and TV series, Vincent n'a pas d'écailles is really the anti-superhero story, or, at least, as much of an anti-superhero movie as a movie about a superhero can be, because the true anti-superhero movie is probably something closer to Pride and Prejudice, or really anything directed by James Ivory.
Vincent n'a pas d'écailles, the first film from Thomas Salvador, who also plays Vincent, is the story of an introverted man who doesn't have friends or, we sense, a family that he's particularly close to. He is a loner and has probably been a loner for quite some time. But unlike the countless other lonely men and women out there, Vincent has superpowers, the cause of his loneliness and marginality; superpowers he doesn't want to share with anybody out of fear of ostracism and an aversion to attention. When his skin enters in contact with water, he develops extraordinary physical strength -- he can jump high, hit hard, swim fast. And yet Vincent n'a pas d'écailles, Vincent doesn't have scales.
But it isn't these circumstances that make this film an unusual movie of its kind. Because we have seen superheroes with similar loner backstories, including Bruce Wayne. What makes the story unique and interesting are its clever and enjoyable subversions of the genre, namely expressed in the film through the pacing and action. In its pacing, we find a very slow movie, but a pleasantly slow movie, a bit like a Sunday drive through the countryside, which, granted, no one does anymore but...
In its action, we find a lack thereof, going hand-in-hand with the glacial pacing. Frankly, not that much happens. Superhero movies are rife with action and plot points, from the main character's discovery of their powers, to their testing of these powers, to their decision to use those powers to help people, to their final encounter with the arch-nemesis, who turns out to be that scientist guy nobody took seriously. But not here. We start the movie with Vincent moving to a small village somewhere in Southern France where he takes a job working construction. Boring. And when we're not watching him working his boring job, we're watching him spend his time alone in his bedroom, lying on his bed, drinking a can of Schweppes. Boring + 1. But it's this lack of action, and this James Ivory pacing, that makes this a superhero movie worth watching. Crazy, right?
At last, the story kicks in when one day Vincent meets a local woman, Lucie, played by the charming Vimala Pons. And this is what Vincent n'a pas d'écailles is really about. A man letting a woman in. A woman loving a shy man. That's it. Nothing more. It just so happens that the man can swim as well as a dolphin.
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