On Christmas Eve, three guys and two girls meet up at the Styxx nightclub and decide to take the party back to the country estate of Eve (Roxane Mesquida of Catherine Breillat's FAT GIRL and SEX IS COMEDY) after an altercation between drunken Bart (Olivier Barthelemy), a bouncer, and a broken bottle. Although Eve and her chateau are elegant, everything else around is decidedly "Deliverance" country, including grinning groundskeeper Joseph (Vincent Cassel in an incredibly hilarious performance) and his very pregnant wife and nympho niece. As the five settle in, they find their partying constantly disrupted by the expected wierdisms, including Joseph's "special" attention to Bart. As midnight approaches, Joseph skulks around and his unseen wife assembles a doll from disparate parts (including a lock of Bart's hair, torn out by niece Jeanne) - "All that's missing is the eyes."

Not as transgressive or brutal as it makes itself out to be, especially when compared to the almost concurrently released CALVAIRE, Capiron's film is still entertaining even if the director seems to run out of ideas at the end. Cassel and the other lesser-known actors all give good performances (Barthelemy makes the sulky and loutish Bart rather endearing actually) and its nice to see an ethnically diverse cast without calling attention to the element (except for some of Cassel's racist remarks). Monica Bellucci also makes a brief cameo.

Eric Cotenas