It's wrong to use the term “very French” as an insult.
Still, those two words are a perfect fit for this collaboration between director Arnaud Desplechin and his favourite actor, Mathieu Amalric.
The latter is Ismael, a supposedly charismatic film director who abandons a project halfway through. Will Ismael finish his opus? I grew sleepy just waiting for him to finish a sentence.
Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg momentarily bring verve to proceedings. Cotillard is Ismael’s free-spirited, long-lost wife Carlotta. Gainsbourg is his inhibited, supportive girlfriend Sylvia. When Carlotta reappears at Ismael’s holiday villa, Sylvia instantly feels threatened.
One afternoon Sylvia watches Carlotta dance to Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe. Carlotta has all the natural rhythm of a robot but because she’s convinced she’s the sexiest woman in the villa it becomes true, and Sylvia’s distress unfurls like a tragic smell.
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The script is full of references to James Joyce’s Ulysses but it’s hard to believe Desplechin has read the novel because Molly Bloom is one of the great female characters and Carlotta and Sylvia have zero substance.
From the moment Ismael obsesses over Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, it’s obvious someone will be heavy with child (naturally we’re meant to view the woman Ismael impregnates as very lucky).
This claptrap should have been ditched halfway through.
