24 heures de la vie d’une femme (2002) - film review

Louis, a disillusioned old man, returns to the French Riviera, the scene of his turbulent adolescence.  By chance, he meets a young woman, Olivia, who, after a violent break up with her boyfriend, chooses to tag along with him.  Louis recounts a story told to him, more than sixty years ago, by a Mrs Marie Collins Brown after his mother had run off with her lover. In the early 1900s, Marie was staying on the Riviera with her sister-in-law when she came across Anton, a young man with an obsession for gambling.   Marie’s desperate attempt to save Anton from his fatal addiction proved to be the most intense day of her life...

Laurent Bouhnik’s stylish, big budget adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s celebrated novel has great strengths, but also some obvious weaknesses.  From a purely technical point of view, the film is impressive – the acting, photography and design are on a par with any quality French film made in recent years.  But as an engaging piece of drama, the film falls way short of its intended mark.  The time-shifting Proustian narrative construction adds little to the central story and, if anything, feels like a consciously arty device to compensate for an unsophisticated plot.  The lack of focus makes it hard to engage with any of the characters – there are in effect three stories being told in parallel and none of them has any real depth or coherence.  Despite these faults, the film does somehow avoid falling into the abyss of pretentious self-indulgence, thanks primarily to some impressive performances from such first rate actors as Agnès Jaoui and Bérénice Bejo.   Whilst the film’s lack of dramatic substance is frustrating, it is hard not to appreciate the genius of some of the sequences (such as Marie’s first meeting with Anton in the casino).  Whilst the film, overall, is something of a disappointment, Laurent Bouhnik shows great promise as a film director.

© James Travers 2007

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