Last night, Karen and I went to see Le Pacte des loups. We had to drive half an hour to get to the only theater in the area that was showing it. The cashier, before she would issue us tickets, asked us, "Are you aware that this film is in French?"

This leads me to guess that a number of patrons had demanded refunds, which is hardly surprising; in the Tampa Bay area, monster truck rallies outsell symphony concerts by at least a ten-to-one margin. I'm sure the idea of having to actually read during a movie, rather than simply shutting their minds off and looking at the pretty pictures, must have driven a large number of Tampans out of the theater.

Speaking of subtitles, the ones in Pacte des loups were pretty subpar. There were a number of misspellings (for example, I always thought that wolves chased prey, not pray), and unfortunately much of the wordplay didn't translate well (such as a character, drunkenly calling attention to his missing right arm, admitting that perhaps he was being gauche).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie; the storyline was much richer than the typical Hollywood flick (though the "surprise" ending is fairly obvious if one simply considers spoiler deleted); the cinematography was lush (albeit overly fond of jumping in and out of slow motion during the fight scenes); and the costuming was phenomenal (Karen let out an "ooooh!" when Emilie Dequenne's character appeared in a riding habit. Karen is fond of riding habits).

There were a couple of continuity errors, such as the protagonist firing a musket twice without reloading. (But to be charitable, perhaps he had a second one loaded, and I just didn't see him make the switch.)

And just two comments on the CG: a large creature should not move that quickly (at least not without a lot of secondary motion); and if your props department can't think of a way to make a bizarre weapon work in real life, it's probably a clue that it'll look really fake if you try and realize it with CG.

(Said weapon, by the way, caused the audience to erupt in laughter when it was first revealed. Honestly, what were they thinking?)