Who Killed Bambi? review

Gilles Marchand previously co-scripted the Hitchcockian thriller Harry, He's Here To Help and the workplace drama Human Resources. It's a surprise, then, that his directorial debut so fatally bungles its David Lynch-ish chiller vibes with a twist on the hospital-as-working-environment. "Bambi" is Isabelle (Sophie Quinton), a surgery trainee whose on-the-job fainting prompts Dr Philipp (Laurent Lucas) to name her after Disney's weak-limbed fawn. The thing is, Dr Phil has some odd tendencies of a nastier kind involving his patients, as Isabelle soon discovers. The sole mystery here is why no one else suspected Philipp of monstrous medical misbehaviour, given Lucas' cartoon-ish scary-doc delivery. He's just one of many pallid characterisations in a slack, predictable plot, which leans heavily on the thin conceit of punctuating the dream-like, anaesthetising hospital setting with lumpen jolts. Marchand's diagnosis? Stick to writing.