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À la folie... pas du tout
2002 Romance / Comedy / Drama
Review
For her directorial debut, Laetitia Colombani presents us with a
puzzle, a kind of cinematic jigsaw that initially appears to be quite
ingenious, until we get to the end and realise that half of the pieces
don’t quite fit together. Colombani is not the first director to
employ the narrative device of first telling
a story from one perspective, and then going back to the start
and telling it again from another. Lucas Belvaux’s Trilogie,
released the same year, showed just how well this device can work if
used intelligently. À la folie... pas du tout begins by showing us the heroine’s point of view. What we get is a kind of poor man's parody of Amélie II, with Audrey Tautou robotically replaying the role of the doe-eyed Mademoiselle Poulin which brought her international stardom the year before. At this stage in the proceedings, we do not yet realise that Tautou’s character is deluded, that she lives in a warped fantasy world, and so it is easy to be turned off by the girly whimsy of the mise-en-scène, the trashy dialogue and the almost surreal flights of fancy, especially if you are a lager-loving bloke who likes his films to be somewhat less oestrogen-charged and flowery. Assuming that you make it to the midway stage, the film suddenly becomes much darker as we see things from the perspective of the object of Tautou’s unsolicited attention. The narrative comes close to falling apart at this point, through weaknesses in the scripting and direction. That the film continues to hold our attention is due almost entirely to the efforts of Samuel Le Bihan, which inject a shot of conviction that is so evidently missing in the script. Other characters, by contrast, are just too thinly sketched to be salvageable, and so the talents of Isabelle Carré and Clément Sibony are pretty well wasted. Interestingly, Carré would play a character very similar to one that Tautou portrays here, in Michel Spinosa’s 2007 film Anna M, which tackles the same subject - erotomania - in a much more sombre and believable manner. If you are in the right frame of mind, À la folie... pas du tout is an easy film to watch - particularly for the Audrey Tautou fans - but it is an empty experience, and one that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The last few scenes are particularly ill-judged and underscore the film’s biggest failing, its almost complete lack of humanity. Anyone looking for a traditional French romantic-comedy should look elsewhere. It may not appear so until quite near to the end but this is an astoundingly dark film - an almost pathologically grim antidote to the classic rom-com. Definitely not a film you would want to watch with your beloved on St Valentine’s Day - unless you have a craving for a lonesome night on the sofa. © Steve Chandler 2010 The opening title sequence is a work of art in itself, consisting of ribbons of wording alluringly twirling themselves around whimsical household objects. We cut to Audrey Tautou, very much continuing in her Amelie vein, beaming at us endearingly over armfuls of flowers, and the extraordinary story begins to unfold. In every shot, suburban Bordeaux is made to look astonishingly clean and colourful, without a hint of any hidden grime, decay or social tension, and this is perhaps a metaphor for Tautou’s character in the film, calm, pretty, almost beatific on the surface, writhing undercurrents of desperation and derangement beneath.In many respects the film pays clear homage to Hitchcock, although not quite achieving that level of tension or suspense. It would not be surprising if Colombani (whose first major film this is) plays a cameo, although as nobody (yet) knows what she looks like this could be rather hard to spot. Clearly a director to watch out for in future, this one. The film achieved good worldwide distribution on the back of Amelie, and generally proved popular with non-French speaking audiences as it is less dialogue-driven and therefore more accessible than most modern French films. © Conrad McDonnell 2003 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Laetitia Colombani
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Samuel Le Bihan, Isabelle Carré, Clément Sibony, Sophie Guillemin Synopsis
The film examines, from various points of view, the love of a highly-strung young artist
(Audrey Tautou, Amelie
) for an unaffectionate but otherwise ideal older man, a doctor (Samuel Le Bihan,
Venus Beauté
(Institut)). It would be best to say little more about the plot, other than
to note that both the French and the English title somewhat give the game away.
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