FOR TRAILERS, SEE THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE
Régis Wargnier's Seeds of Death (Pars vite et reviens tard) -- a.k.a. "Have Mercy on Us All" (English working title) -- is scheduled to have its North American première at this year's Fantasia Festival in Montréal, Canada on July 23rd at 9:40 p.m.; it's to be the festival's closing night film. Gaumont Columbia TriStar Films released the movie theatrically in France on January 24th. Gaumont S.A. is the international sales agent for it.
The screenplay for Seeds of Death (Pars vite et reviens tard) was written by Julien Rappeneau, Ariane Fert, Harriet Marin, Lawrence Shore, and Wargnier -- with dialogue by Rappeneau and Fert -- based on the eponymous (with regard to the French title) novel Have Mercy on Us All (Pars vite et reviens tard) by Fred Vargas. The movie stars José Garcia, Lucas Belvaux, Marie Gillain, Olivier Gourmet, Nicolas Cazalé, Linh Dan Pham (she's also in Marc Caro's upcoming Dante 01), and Michel Serrault.
Here's a description of Seeds of Death from the Fantasia Festival website: "Spring has arrived, but it brings little joy to Parisian policeman Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Distance is growing between him and his fiancée, Camille, a burden he can ill afford to shoulder -- Adamsberg is about to be drawn into an investigation that will demand all he can give, as an shadown of malevolent mystery spills across the City of Lights. Strange symbols are found scrawled on doors, and voices carry through the night streets -- evil is afoot! But it is when a body is discovered, nude, blackened, its face contorted into hideous grimace, that the matter takes on a fearful urgency. For these are the signs of the plague, a mediaeval scourge seemingly revived, and worse yet, guided by a hidden hand.
French director Régis Wargnier is rightly celebrated for his exotic cinematic journeys -- his Indochine, with Catherine Deneuve, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1993, and 1999's Est-Ouest peered into a post-war Stalinist Ukraine, while his more recent Man to Man (2005) was his voyage into Africa. With Pars vite et reviens tard, however, Wargnier comes home, and at the same time indulges his urge to fashion an effective cop thriller. In his adaptation of a novel by the distinctive crime writer Fred Vargas -- comparable to Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) in his historical and archaeological fascinations, albeit with a more refined sense of realism and psychological insight -- Wargnier brings to life a Paris at once sharply modern and shrouded in the fog of the past, and infuses it with a grim, arresting sense of dread. Leading the cast is José Garcia (La boîte noire, Costa-Gavras's Le couperet), and watch for the great Michel Serrault as well."
For more information on Seeds of Death, see ScreenAnarchy's third, second, and first articles on it.
Those who are interested in Seeds of Death may also wish to read the ScreenAnarchy articles on Éric Barbier's The Snake (Le serpent), Frédéric Schoendoerffer's Crime Insiders (Truands), and Alain Corneau's The Second Wind (Le deuxième souffle).
Seeds of Death trailer #2 (downloadable 12 MB WMV file -- viewer discretion is advised)
Seeds of Death trailer #2 (downloadable 15.9 MB MOV file -- viewer discretion is advised)
Seeds of Death trailer #1 (downloadable 11.9 MB WMV file -- viewer discretion is advised)
Seeds of Death trailer #1 (downloadable 18.9 MB MOV file -- viewer discretion is advised)
Seeds of Death official website
Gaumont: Seeds of Death
Fantasia Festival: Seeds of Death
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GOMORRAHY.com: Dante 01 (w/ poster, stills, etc.)
GOMORRAHY.com: Crime Insiders (w/ trailers, etc.)