A man accused of murdering his old rival falls prey to a demented surgeon with a goal of male domination, and must be saved by his longtime romantic partner in an all out absurdly outrageous battle of the sexes in Zenithal.
Martial arts films have had their peaks and valleys, with some of those highest of highs coming from the 80s, and the lowest of lows following right after. Thanks to John Wick and several other big name action movies, the genre felt refreshed and once again set on a path to be heights. Then there’s Zenithal, which seems determined to single handedly bring about another downfall. It’s bad, and not in the good way, and unfortunately falls very short of being anything that it thinks it wants to be, in any of the genres it’s emulating. It can’t be a comedy because it’s not funny, it can’t be a martial arts film because there’s barely any choreography, and it can’t be fun because it’s a boring slog that still somehow manages to at least look pretty on screen.
While I commend Jean-Baptiste Saurel for his attempt at bringing the absurd comedy twist to the genre, it just doesn’t work unless you’re a teenage boy who thinks dick jokes are the penultimate level of humor and that the differences between men and women can be condensed and simplified in such black and white terms as “having or not having balls.” Every effort it makes to be different just inadvertently drags it into the muck, and the characters feel like they want so badly to be more than what they’re given that it’s almost painful to watch. Not to mention the plot is convoluted and uninteresting, completely hinging on the hope that you’ll be too busy laughing at one character’s oversized prosthetic penis to notice that it’s lacking. Sadly, I wasn’t laughing.
My highest praise goes to Vanessa Guide, who manages to take her character that is barely more than a flat, two dimensional man’s idea of a woman, and make her feel unique through her stellar performance as Sonia. The rest of the characters are okay, albeit rather unnoteworthy, despite the fact that they were obviously given more attention on paper than the female characters. For a movie that wants so badly to represent a female lead as being the hero, it sure spends enough time talking about male characters, and their genitalia, to nauseate me and cause me to lose interest. Not to mention the fact that it’s almost as if they tried their best to make Franc Bruneau’s Francis look as much like a homeless bum alcoholic as possible, further boosting the beauty of Guide. It’s just weird.
The only other area I can find to praise about this mess of a film is the cinematography. The use of lighting and color is visually catchy and professional, making an otherwise unwatchable movie into a feast for the eyeballs, at the very least. It’s a shame that the talents of Yann Maritaud are all but wasted here. Hopefully they’ll find more widespread success on better projects, because their work here is wonderful.
In a blatantly “man telling a woman’s story” film like Zenithal, it’s hard to remember that we’re living in 2025. This movie should’ve stayed in someone’s notebook as an idea never to be revisited. Or maybe made about 15 years ago when male comedies were considered the best things on the market.