Je m’appelle Elisabeth (2006) - film review

Ten year old Elisabeth lives in a large house next to a psychiatric hospital which is run by her father.  Her older sister has just gone away to  boarding school and her parents are on the verge of separating.  In her unsettled state she finds an unlikely friend in a troubled adolescent who has just run away from the hospital...

Films about childhood are usually hit and miss affairs, their success depending on how effectively they can engage our emotions and evoke memories of our own childhood experiences.  Jean-Pierre Améris’s Je m’appelle Elisabeth is a definitely miss, although it does have a certain poetic charm which at least partly redeems its faults.

Despite some obvious talent in the acting and cinematography departments, the film has very little emotional power and, overall, it just fails to make any real impact.  The detached and somewhat stilted literary approach shown in both the scripting and direction undermines the film’s realism and introduces a pretty indigestible element of superficiality which, at times, suggests self-parody.

The grotesque characterisation is the script’s biggest weakness.  There’s hardly a single character in this film that convinces, even though the performances are generally pretty good.  What really offends are the unintended clichés and some hopelessly tacky dialogue.  It’s hard to watch the final scene without cringing or laughing at the production team’s attempts to evoke real heart-felt poignancy, with all the skill and subtlety of an inept one-armed DIY enthusiast plastering a ceiling for the first time, with a garden spade.

© James Travers 2008

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