THE STORY – Vincent works the night shift on the construction site of a futuristic district. When a worker goes missing, Vincent and his colleagues begin to suspect that their superiors are covering up an accident. But soon, another worker disappears.
THE CAST – Damien Bonnard, Samir Guesmi, Mouna Soualem, Tudor-Aaron Istodor, Ahmed Abdel-Laoui, Denis Eyriey Issaka Sawadogo, Mounir Margoum & Zacharia Mezouar
THE TEAM – Akihiro Hata (Director/Writer) & Jérémie Dubois (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
It’s sometimes easy to forget that every single building we pass, from derelict sheds to towering glass skyscrapers, once wasn’t there. Each brick was laid by hand, each angle intricately calculated and double, triple-checked. The world is built on labor, and yet the hard work of these undervalued workers often gets buried under the foundations of the buildings themselves. This is the concept at the core of “The Site,” a layered, atmospheric thriller that deconstructs the classist inequity that our entire society is built upon.
The film follows Vincent (Damien Bonnard), a night-shift construction worker assigned to help build a new complex of modern apartments and work spaces, optimistically named Grand Ciel. But progress stunts when the foundational concrete is ruled to be unsafe, and Vincent’s team is given heaps of extra work to bring this luxury paradise to life. And to make matters worse, Vincent begins to suspect foul play when a string of his colleagues end up going missing in the dead of night.
“The Site” is a film that’s entirely driven by its social commentary. While this allows for some very astute observations about modern classism and the unfair contrast between expensive buildings and the welfare of those who build them, it can often feel like Akihiro Hata’s film favors the allegorical so much that it neglects the more basic, surface-level aspects of the story. Every single aspect of this narrative has something to say about the real world, whether it’s the visceral imagery of the workers literally “digging up” the corruption of their superiors, or the building’s rotten, unstable roots being an obvious metaphor for corruption and exploitation. There’s so much greater subtext to reckon with, but “The Site” doesn’t always give its plot the same depth.
Despite the care that’s taken to make the audience empathize with him and understand the injustice of his work, “The Site” doesn’t spend enough time developing Vincent’s character and making him feel three-dimensional. There are attempts at fleshing out his relationship with his equally ground-down partner (Mouna Soualem), including an interesting subplot about the way their laborious work chips away at their shared joie de vivre, but it’s constantly sidelined to make room for the film’s overarching allegory.
Sadly, this leaves much of “The Site” feeling quite repetitive and familiar. The screenplay touches on the same ideas time and time again, using the same brutalist imagery and unsettling visuals to remind the audience exactly what it wants to say, instead of letting these crucial themes blossom organically. But make no mistake, the film has some very pressing ideas and astute observations about the world around us, it just doesn’t always know how best to present them.
Perhaps the most poignant of the film’s thematic strands is the idea of abuse and exploitation being cyclical – a chain of command that feeds power to those on top and pulls the most desperate up the ladder to repeat the process. Hata’s film presents this very effectively, immediately getting the audience on Vincent’s side by showing us how relentlessly he’s willing to work in order to support his family, then making us interrogate his actions when he ascends to the very status that he resented so much at the beginning of the story.
In this sense, “The Site” is a very powerful and timely narrative, but one that often feels like it’s been constructed around an idea instead of weaving it into the fabric of the screenplay. There’s a certain dissonance between the film’s plot and the ideas it’s trying to convey, which makes for a frustrating viewing experience which is more admirable than enjoyable. There’s certainly no shortage of films about social disharmony in today’s cinematic climate, so it takes a much more refined story to really justify one’s existence and prove what sets it apart from the otherwise saturated crowd. Unfortunately, “The Site” doesn’t quite hit that mark, even if its story is very compelling on the surface.
The ending of “The Site” will split audiences. It’s intentionally open-ended, and whether or not this nuanced approach actually works is going to be different for each viewer. The lack of closure certainly adds to the film’s creeping sense of dread, but the ambiguity somewhat betrays the sharpness of the preceding story.
Thankfully, there’s still plenty to enjoy about “The Site” on a more superficial level. Carla Pallone’s pulsing score is a technical standout, soundtracking some of the film’s most intense moments with a powerful force. This is only helped by the film’s immersive, abrasive sound design, which really places the audience inside the story and adds to the often suffocating atmosphere. Many will come away from “The Site” feeling exhausted and unfulfilled, and while this would typically be read as a criticism of a thriller, there’s something very fitting about the way Hata and co-writer Jérémie Dubois refuse to give the audience the contentment they deserve, much like the characters they’re watching.
