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| Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider in Death Watch |
Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch takes place in a future in which death from disease has become so rare that it's not just newsworthy, it's a commercial opportunity. That is, it attracts those who would cash in on the voyeurism of reality television. Watching people die has become as popular as watching wealthy housewives squabble is today. This leads TV producer Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton) to try to persuade Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider), who has been told that she's dying from an incurable disease, to let him document her last days. Ferriman has a secret gimmick: He has persuaded Roddy (Harvey Keitel), a cameraman, to undergo an experimental procedure that turns his own eyes into cameras that broadcast whatever he sees to Ferriman's studio. Roddy is supposed to follow Katherine wherever she goes as she's dying. Katherine wants no part of Ferriman's plan at first, but eventually she pretends to go along with it, planning to escape. You guessed it: She doesn't know about Roddy's augmentation, and when she thinks she has given Ferriman the slip, hiding out in a slummy part of the city and disguising herself, Roddy seeks her out and befriends her, secretly transmitting her experiences back to the studio. It's an ingenious setup for a story that takes some predictable courses -- yes, Katherine and Roddy fall into something like love -- but also has a few surprising and even poignant twists. Tavernier's film gets its texture from the tension between its futuristic story and its setting, a mundane urban environment that could be almost any era in the past hundred or so years. Even its international cast provides a sense of universality to the film. Like most good science fiction, it's really about the present more than the future,
