The nightmare begins alongside what seems similar a reasonable if mayhap too casual, existent estate transaction. Simon Sandberg (Jérémie Renier) lives with his married woman in addition to teen daughter in an old-school Paris apartment building, the sort where you go through an arched entrance together with get into a shared courtyard. Simon’s family has owned the flat for several generations, too a cellar comes alongside it. Simon’s got no utilization for the good-kept space and is great to sell it too utilization the proceeds to renovate his family’s living quarters.
His buyer is a distinguished-looking older gentleman of sober mien, Jacques Fonzic, played by François Cluzet, i of the most stalwart as well as trustworthy-appearing actors inward contemporary French movie house. After Simon boasts of the cellar’sec status—“no humidity, no mold”—he too Fonzic haggle over cost, with Simon getting nearly all of what he asks, which is delivered in toto amongst a certified cheque.
Concerns get down almost straightaway. A neighbour informs Simon that Fonzic is actually staying in the cellar, which he had said was for storage. Sure enough, there he is on a cot. Acting humiliated, Fonzic tells Simon that he’second between apartments. Simon allows him the employment of a guest room inwards proximity to his family’second plane.
In the meantime, at domicile, Simon’s family has its ain banal problems. Daughter Justine is eager to get her braces off. There’sec mold on the bath ceiling that the super’s not also thrilled well-nigh dealing alongside. Things are pretty tranquility for Simon’sec medical technician wife Hélène (Bérénice Bejo), but that volition change soon plenty.
Soon, Fonzic questions Justine nigh her organized religion when she encounters him in the courtyard. A bartender at a nearby bistro tells Simon that Fonzic’s e’er coming in to usage the bath, never buys anything, as well as calls the bartender a “muddy Arab” when confronted. A wait into Fonzic’second Internet footprint reveals a cruel, antisemitic online conspiracy monger behind the reasonable façade. And it turns out the check he paid from the cellar is from a Castilian bank with ties to far-right organizations. Confronted almost his writings, Fonzic insists on his correct to “inquiry” the prevalent narrative. Eventually, he works some of his twisted thinking into Justine’sec encephalon.
As Simon’s efforts to reverse his mistake hit multiple legal brick walls, some viewers may call back the non-fully-baked 1990 tenant-from-hell thriller “Pacific Heights.” In that motion picture, said tenant was played by Michael Keaton, who was cast against the likable type. That’sec the example here, classify of. It’sec non exclusively accurate inward terms of screen iconography to say that casting Cluzet inward this purpose is akin to casting Tom Hanks every bit the Holocaust-denier David Irving, but that’second close. In whatever issue, Cluzet is superb inward the function, fifty-fifty when the climax calls on him to exhibit his paw inward a mode that’sec arguably too obvious by one-half.
Renier, likewise, is superb inward a use that carries a lot of thematic weight. Because the picture, directed past Phillipe Le Guay from a script concocted by Le Guay, Gilles Taurand, together with Marc Weitzmann, is ultimately more than of a job picture than a thriller. Simon is ambivalent about his Jewish heritage, patch his blood brother, David, played by Jonathan Zaccaï, is a more militant type. At the gym where Justine takes courses in Krav Maga, David introduces Simon to a distich of crude guys who would live happy to scare Fonzic past beating him senseless. Anti-Semitism inwards French Republic is a peculiarly fraught issue. It has been since earlier the Dreyfus example (that was in the 1890s, kids), as well as its new iterations inwards the QAnon era are nerve-wracking, to say the to the lowest degree. “The Man in the Basement” doesn’t endorse a single reply; it ends on a deliberately tentative Federal Reserve note, leaving the viewer thoroughly unsettled.