Subwoofer: Le Chant du loup

I had a chance to watch one of the films that Léo introduced me to on Tuesday: Le Chant du loup a 2019 submarine movie starring François Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Kassovitz. Omar Sy and polymath Alexis Michalik also appear in supporting roles. I recognized Civil, as he plays Hippolyte Barneville in the series Dix Pour Cent. Le Chant du loup didn’t make much of a splash in France, and box office receipts only covered 60% of production costs despite being in theaters for 21 weeks. It didn’t have theatrical releases outside of France, though that might have been fallout from Covid. I watched it on Netflix; I wonder how much of the revenue for movies like this comes from post-theatrical streaming services.

I have an odd relationship with submarine fiction. On the one hand, I feel like I know the tropes by heart: close quarters, limited communications, critical sonar and radio operators, torn or tyrannical captains, mystery sounds, incomplete information about the ocean and its natural or man-made inhabitants. I must have seen this story a million times. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve seen enough submarine movies to exhaust the fingers on said hand. There’s Hunt for Red October, U-571, … uh, maybe that’s it? Maybe I’ve read a ton of submarine fiction? Patrick Robinson’s Nimitz Class, some scenes in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, … uh, the novel of Red October…

No, It’s not that I’ve seen or read lots of these. Just to be sure, I consulted Wikipedia’s list of 150 submarine movies, and indeed I’ve seen just the two. So why does Le Chant du loup seem so familiar? I think it must be that Hunt for Red October is so iconic that the other works can’t help but echo it with slight variations.

In any event, Le Chant du loup is OK, but extremely predictable to anyone who has seen or read Tom Clancy’s masterpiece. At first I tried watching the film with audio only, but found I was missing too many of the particulars and just relying on my guesses of how the story must be going. After 30 minutes of this I turned on the French closed-captions and restarted from the beginning. Smooth sailing from there, as the language is not difficult when read; some combination of the speed, the informal delivery, and the loud music/sound effects made it hard with no closed captions.