FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL: Films directed by older men in which aging male authors get off with a younger woman of great sexual appeal seem to be catching in French cinema. Either this says something about the degree to which authors are worshipped in French culture, or it speaks to an unrealistically virile self-image of French men of a certain vintage.
a film with no discernible raison d’etre
We saw it with Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two, which screened on SBS in February 2013 and had Ludivine Sagnier's sexpot thinking nothing of hopping between the sheets with a man of an age where the nickname 'gramps’ might be considered more appropriate than 'darling’. And here we go again with this oddly titled story in which a literary author of approximately 50 years of age effortlessly charms an extravagantly gorgeous younger female, a woman who seems neither troubled by the age gap nor by the fact she already has a contended de facto – her young daughter’s father – waiting for her at home.
The film marks the directorial debut of its lead actor Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, whom Australia’s French cinema lovers are most likely to recognise for his impressive lead performance as a stressed-out film producer in Mia Hansen-Løve’s 2008 drama, The Father of My Children. Sadly he makes a much lighter impression here, largely because his own screenplay gives him such an ill-defined character with too few life challenges to negotiate.
De Lencquesaing’s character is divorced, middle-aged author Paul, the father of a teenage daughter (his real daughter, Alice de Lencquesaing), who very easily sweeps off her feet a young woman called Ada (Italy’s Valentina Cervi), who works for his publisher and just happens to be jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Of all the women in Paris, Ada – quel coincidence! – happens to be the mother who employs his daughter for babysitting duties.
The opening scenes hold some promise since they appear to be setting up Paul with a potential web of personal crisis, but the odd thing about the screenplay (penned by the director) is that it fails to pick up these threads and develop them. The underwhelming result, while unquestionably well-acted, effectively warns of the danger of letting actors pick self-written scripts for their first go behind the camera.
Paul is depicted occasionally writing down his story as if he’s preparing to use it for his next novel – though since nothing is ever made of this, it’s hard to see what point is supposedly being made. Also frustratingly under-developed is a narrative strand that has Paul and his brother trying to deal with their mother’s sudden death. The trouble is that this subplot, while taking up an inordinate amount of screen time, is direction-less and too weakly linked to the main point about Paul’s affair (both in narrative and thematic terms) to justify its existence. Add this to the lack of dramatic tension in Paul and Ada’s affair and you have a film with no discernible raison d’etre beyond providing a vanity project for an undeniably talented actor.
The casting of Alice de Lencquesaing in a near-identical role to the one she played as her father’s screen-daughter in the powerful The Father of My Children merely underlines this film’s weakness. The younger Alice de Lencquesaing clearly has a potentially strong career ahead (she was also fine in Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours), so let’s hope both she and her father have better acting opportunities ahead of them.
Assuming this reviewer’s schoolboy-level French is trustworthy, the original French title for this drama, Au Galop, translates literally as 'At a Gallop’, which sounds even more urgent than the handle attached for the English-speaking market. Why would the filmmakers and their sales agent want anyone to expect a wild ride when the story is more languid than a leaf blowing down a street on a hot and windless afternoon? If the title is intended to be ironic, the point is likely to be lost on audiences.
