1981 · crime · noir · colonial
Clean Slate
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier2h 8m1981
A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.
Our read: Clean Slate (1981) reads as a sombre, kinetic, inventive crime · noir · colonial entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.
Sombre, kinetic, measured crime / noir, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, mid-stakes, cold.
- sombre
- brisk
- intense
- bleak
- cold
Watching Clean Slate tonight? Spin for your lens.
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Availability in the UK · via JustWatch
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How Clean Slate feels to watch.
Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
What watching it is actually like.
“You want biting colonial dark comedy about a pitiful man seeking a clean slate.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if racist-period cruelty and bleak moral rot exhaust you.
Eight films that feel like this one.
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