When a man named Nail meets a man named Hammer, friendship becomes psychological warfare.
Georges Nail lives in a new suburb. He's married, loves his wife, son and dog. Paul Hammer is good looking, rich and intelligent. But he is torn by his severe judgment of the world and a desire to be part of it. One day, their paths meet. Nail sees this meeting as an opportunity to create a new friendship. On his side, Hammer sees it as a new reason for living : to crucify the perfect image of the happy western man and his incarnation in the person of Georges Nail. A nail is the perfect victim for a hammer.
Writing
The names alone are doing more work than most scripts.
Acting
López's creeping unease vs. Barr's magnetic cruelty.
Direction
Des Pallières turns sterile suburbia into existential trap.
Director
Arnaud des Pallières
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Des Pallières adapts his own novel, and the film's theatrical origins show in its chess-match structure—every suburban encounter staged like psychological combat.
This belongs to a very specific 2000s French cinema of bourgeois unease—think Haneke's 'Caché' but with more explicit class warfare and less mystery.
FR
