IP5 (1992) - film review

Street graffiti artist Tony and his child rap-obsessed companion Jockey are heading for Grenoble to deliver a consignment of overgrown gnomes for some skinheads.  En route, Tony changes his mind, gives up his mission, and decides instead to pursue the woman he has fallen in love with, a young nurse who has just moved to Toulouse.  When the car they first steal runs out of petrol, Tony and Jockey make off with another, not realising that there is someone lying in the back seat.  The stranger – a mysterious old man named Leon – proves to be harder to shake off than the two youngsters would like.  Once Leon has saved their bacon on two occasions, Tony and Jockey decide to tag along with him.   Leon has his own quest – to find the woman who stole his heart so many years ago.  But why is he carrying a loaded gun?

Time and again, director Jean-Jacques Beineix found it hard to repeat the success of his first film, Diva (1981), and although some of his subsequent work has some artistic merit, much of it really does deserve to be forgotten.  His fifth film, IP5 , has all the telltale signs of a director who is desperately flailing about for new ideas in an attempt to affirm his artistic credentials.   Fleeting moments of unbridled creative genius punctuate a film that is ponderous, pretentious and ludicrously lacking in narrative coherence.

With its laughably implausible, rambling narrative and wafer-thin characterisation, the film would be unwatchable were it not for one essential element: Yves Montand. The latter’s enigmatic and highly poignant portrayal of a tree-hugging mystic who has been scarred by both love and life is the only thing in this film which is capable of sustaining our interest.   The main selling point of IP5 is that it is Yves Montand’s final film – the actor died very shortly after the filming was completed, from a heart attack (as did the character he played in the film).

© James Travers 2006

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