OK, I admit it; I do occasionally nod off when watching films. How else to explain the occasions when I end up seeing a movie where certain plot points and the actors seem vaguely familiar, but where I am convinced that the film is new to me. Such was the case with this French film which I eventually worked out I had supposedly watched about a year and a half ago. (Being something of a compulsive, I do keep various lists of what I have viewed -- but these are in more than one category and not necessarily alphabetical -- so I do find myself from time to time in the aforementioned puzzled state.)
So why else did I not remember it? Probably because it was not overly memorable or gripping. Like so many French films it was something of a slice of life with two main characters: a single mother who has gone to visit her ailing father and a slightly scatty violinist who has been detained at a mental hospital by the petition of a "third party". We are halfway through the movie before we are let in on the information that Ishmael was Nora's second "husband". She has not actually ever been married, having petitioned the courts to "marry" her child's father after his death so that the boy can bear his name. Now she is about to actually wed a rich man who doesn't connect with the child and she wants Ishmael to adopt him, since they always got along well -- being something of a childish personality himself.
That's about it, apart from the incidental information that Nora was probably responsible for her first lover's "suicide" and the fact that she almost certainly killed her father to ease his suffering. So she's not a particularly nice person and it was more than a little difficult to empathise with such a selfish soul. The actress playing the part was Emmanuelle Devos and people kept telling her how gorgeous she was -- which she wasn't to my eyes. Mathieu Amalric playing Ishmael was by far the more interesting character, but not enough to sustain one's affections or attention. Catherine Deneuve had a small role as the hospital psychiatrist and added almost nothing to the experience. I think I'm unlikely to have to face this film a third time.
1 comment:
Again I felt the film demonstrated a lapse of moral fortitude or whatever you want
to call a willingness to accept responsibility for one's actions though here the lead
cloaked this lack where her various 'husbands' seem not to have. However, the
second of these did seem to develop a fine sense of what was and what was not
the right thing to do which actually made him the most interesting character in
the film.
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