À vendre (1998) - film review

When France Robert disappears on her wedding day with a bag of money, her jilted prospective husband sends a private detective, Luigi Primo, to recover her.  Primo’s investigation takes him from Paris to Marseilles, where he learns from her former contacts that she compels her boyfriends to pay for sex, fleeing as soon as she starts to feel any genuine romantic attachment to them.  As he struggles to resolve the enigma that is France Robert, Luigi Primo feels strangely attracted to her...

This extraordinary and  provocative analysis of a woman’s quest for fulfilment and self-realisation viewed from the perspective of an embittered solitary Italian is a stunning yet shocking piece of cinema.  The merging of past and present into a continuous kaleidoscopic sequences of images creates the feel of an impressive psychological drama, laced with the intrigue of a bizarre crime mystery, strangely reminiscent of Citizen Kane.

This artistic overload is impressive but it weakens the film in other areas, such as a clarity of narrative and characterisation.  Also, some of the violence in the sex scenes is very explicit and quite off-putting.  However, overall the film has a positive impact, and its structure and style are so refreshingly original that it cannot fail to leave its viewer indifferent.

Sandrine Kiberlain, a rising star in French cinema, is captivating, although her performance is curiously detached and lacking in emotion. However, the film’s star is undoubtedly the charismatic Italian actor Sergio Castellitto, whose performance reveals so much emotional baggage that the film feels more like an investigation into his character’s psychology rather than that of the mysterious France Robert.

© James Travers 2001

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