Avril (2006) - film review

Avril has spent her entire life in a convent.  Shortly after she was born, she was given up to the mother superior, Marie-Josèphe, who agreed to take charge of her upbringing.  Now, aged 21, Avril is about to take the vows that will sanctify her life-long vocation as a nun.  Before she does so, her friend sister Bernadette tries to persuade her to reconsider, to think about a life outside the convent.  Avril is surprised when Bernadette tells her that she has a twin brother.  She takes advantage of the period of reflection she is offered to try to find him...

Gérald Hustache-Mathieu earned widespread critical acclaim for his two short films Peau de vache (2001) and La Chatte andalouse (2002), but reaction to Avril, his first feature length film, has been mixed.  The story of a novice experiencing her sexual awakening is engaging but is likely to cause offence to those of a traditional Christian mindset.  The film portrays religious devotion in a distinctly negative light, and this perhaps weakens the power of the story it has to tell.  Had the central protagonist experienced a genuine conflict between the two kind of lives she is offered, the film might have had greater impact.  Instead, Avril walks out of the dank austerity of convent life into a sunshine idyll on the beach, and clearly she isn’t going to turn back.

The limitations of Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s skill as a director and writer only really become apparent in the second half of the film.  In the first half, the director’s inexperience works in his favour, allowing him to bring a kind of understated cinéma vérité sincerity to many sequences, particularly those in which Avril gradually falls under the spell of Pierre.  It helps of course that Hustache-Mathieu has such a talented cast of actors at his disposal.

The charismatic Sophie Quinton provides a good focal point for the film, totally convincing as the naive young woman who, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, slowly wakes up to her true destiny.   Equally impressive is Miou-Miou who brings a solemn poignancy to her role, her character making a sad contrast with Avril since there can be no magical transformation for her and perhaps no redemption either.   Although the principal male characters are less well developed and slightly prone to cliché, Nicolas Duvauchelle and Clément Sibony succeed in rendering them sympathetic and believable.

Where the film falls down is in its ending, which feels like the cinematic equivalent of a train running off the rails and crashing into a well-stocked farm of impossibly cute meerkats.  The film’s last ten minutes are almost unbearable, much harder to sit through than a massive meerkat massacre.  No sooner have we been treated to a characteristically Gallic French version of Changing Rooms (something which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase DIY), there ensues a a mad flurry of plot contrivance, Grand Guignol theatricality and general arty farty excess that makes you want to do an impression of Edvard Munch’s most famous painting.  Had it not been for this somewhat bungled ending, Avril could easily have been the most highly rated French film of the year.  Still, for a directorial debut, it is pretty damn good.

© James Travers 2010

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