If you're going to make a film, at least try to have a coherent story that will leave the viewer with a sense that something meaningful has happened. This film failed to do so, and seemed like it was written by an adolescent who was trying to emulate David Lynch, but lacked the maturity to carry it out. It starts with a Blue Velvet-like opening, with a young couple in the South of France,finding a cell phone that leads them to a young man and woman attempting suicide by pills and gas fumes in a car. The guy dies, but the young woman survives because they pulled her out of the car. They hear someone running away in the woods. The lead male character, Gaspard, finds a camera on the dashboard that has filmed the would-be suicide, pockets it and takes it home and views it. He is smitten by the blonde woman would-be suicide, and tries to find out who she is by a reference to a virtual reality program the couple mentioned before they tried to end it all. He goes with his friends to smoke some dope in an apartment where the mysterious blonde and her brother happen to live. ****SPOILER***

I could go on and fill in the rest of the story, but let's just say Gaspard rejects his girlfriend and goes after the blonde, only to find out her brother is using her to lure suicidal men to their doom so he can film their suicides. Huh? Are we supposed to believe that she has done this before and survived, when she would have died if Gaspard hadn't pulled her out of the car? Are we supposed to believe that the only way he can satisfy this fetish(?)is to have his sister kill herself? What is this movie trying to say? It ends with Gaspard crying in the police station and telling his original girlfriend he really loves her. The film had good acting, great animation, an electronic music score with some catchy pan-diatonicism, and was shot and directed very well; too bad a better story line couldn't have been worked out.

L'autre Monde – Black Heaven – TRASH IT (C+) L'autre Monde is a weird exotic French movie about a boy getting obsessed with the suicidal girl. The beginning of the movie is interesting and it seems very real but once the whole Black Hole game starts it kind of put the movie into another track. The Black Hole Tron lookalike scenes are not interesting, it's kind of weird. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet is good but there is nothing much he could have done in it. Louise Bourgoin is exotic and Pauline Etienne is cute. On the whole L'autre is a perfect French movie everyone should avoid as it ruins the concept of the French movies.

I loved the game sequences, you get the feeling they really captured the spirit of online gaming and the game world here is dark and compelling. The story has to do with sexual obsession, a boy falls for a tragic femme fatale who appears to be trying to commit suicide. The relationship is realized in part in the game world, a eerie cyber world called BlackHole where the mystery woman has a character called Sam. I found myself wishing there actually was such a game because the graphics were so beautiful in a haunting sort of way. The game in Black Heaven was much more interesting than the ugly game world realized in "eXistenZ".

Unfortunately, the backstory just doesn't live up to the potential of the fictional game and the ending is abrupt. Still, I found Black Heaven to hold my interest. Perhaps if the main character Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) hadn't been played as such a dimwitted dork the mystery might have had more tension. As such he's way too passive and detached. This could have been a great thriller if more story action had taken place in that fascinating game world.