FANTASIA25 REVIEW: Flush [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 70 minutes
Director(s): Grégory Morin
Writer(s): David Neiss

It can’t be glued back!

In a last-ditch effort to prove to his parents that he’s fit to raise his own daughter, Luc (R. Jonathan Lambert) heads to the club where his ex (Élodie Navarre’s Val) works to snort a gram of coke in a basement toilet stall and coerce her into answering her phone by saying he’s in the building. Yes, he said he’d quit the drugs, but he needs the extra courage since he can only see Zoé if both he and Val attend her birthday party. Luc has burned this familial bridge too many times to be trusted alone or to be believed that Val is staying away on purpose and not because of him. So, it’s now or never. It’s time to pull out all the stops.

Unfortunately for Luc, however, the mix of anxiety, adrenaline, and narcotics has him vibrating out of his skin. One slip on the porcelain and his foot gets caught in the hole. Now he’s panicking. He starts flailing around so the camera can investigate the space and reveal the lock mechanism on the door, the xenomorph glory hole on the wall, and the flush chain hanging above the squat pan. And to make matters worse, his joy in finally breaking loose coincides with the arrival of Dindon (Rémy Adriaens). He’s the dealer who sold Luc the gram and now thinks this estranged dad stole his stash. Why? Because it was hidden in that toilet.

This is where the initial comedic chaos of Luc’s implausible situation turns dark with director Grégory Morin and screenwriter David Neiss introducing Dindon’s boss Sam (Elliot Jenicot). He and his pet rat Rabla can smell liars and, since this case of mistaken identity quickly turns into a case of greed-fueled idiocy, the accused is setting off alarm bells. Cue a fit of rage and the premise Flush promises officially comes to fruition with Luc on his knees, arms outstretched, and head smashed through the porcelain. Bloodied, bruised, at risk of drowning, and unable to clearly instruct his phone’s AI to help, the clock on his survival ticks.

Set in this stall for the duration, Morin must pull out all the stops to keep things visually interesting. That means showing us his hands blindly fishing around for assistance from above and his head desperately searching for answers from below. Sometimes it’s about showing the two vantages working together (plugging headphones into his phone before feeding the bud down a crack in the porcelain in hopes he’ll be better understood). Sometimes its adding drama by pulling back within the drainage pipe to show how waste from the next stall over eventually flows into his face.

Neiss has concocted some crazy scenarios for Morin to solve and each one gets more deranged as they go. From needing to bite and pull a tampon out of the drainage hole after someone flushes to accidentally losing an appendage in a bid to loosen the jagged piece of porcelain threatening his carotid to a stranger finally supplying that xenomorph its payoff—Luc would probably be better off letting himself drown to put an end to his suffering. But he loves his daughter and refuses to let her think of him as a screw-up like everyone else. I mean, he is a screw-up. He does nothing to refute that reputation. He’s trying, though.

Urine and feces eventually make way for blood as fear-driven mistakes lead to injuries and the rising sun signifies closing time and a return of Luc’s aggressors to finish the job. Some of the actions forced upon his character appear sadistic for torture’s sake, but know that each one also brings a narrative purpose later on. Nothing that Morin and Neiss add or inflict is random and Luc has no choice but to try and use everything at his disposal to stay alive long enough for an escape. It demands an unhinged performance from Lambert that maintains its underlying sorrow throughout the lows of terror and the highs of relief.

The graphic nature of the locale won’t be for the faint of hearts. A lot of the violence is delivered in quick bursts or off-screen, but the filth of bodily waste and fluids is unavoidable. Luc is consuming toilet water, chomping into flesh, and having his wounds cauterized by chemical cleaners. His screams are near constant and his pleas for anyone to believe his circumstances aren’t a joke render him an exasperated mess. Think the toilet scene in Trainspotting lasting a full seventy-minutes of drug-addled paranoia, rage, and regret without the dream-like ability to simply swim out. Is it all a lesson for Luc to finally quit the coke? Maybe. But he might need to snort some more first.