|
Overview
La Fabrique des sentiments is a French romantic film drama first released in 2008,
directed by Jean-Marc Moutout.
The film stars Elsa Zylberstein, Jacques Bonnaffé, Bruno Putzulu, Hiam Abbass and Anne-Katerine Normant.
It has also been released under the title: The Feelings Factory.
Our overall rating for this film is: very good.
Synopsis
To all appearances, Eloïse, 37, has made a success of her
life. Her job as a property lawyer in Paris gives her a decent
income, independence and a chic apartment. But, whilst
happy in her professional life, she feels increasingly
unfulfilled. The one thing she does not have is love, the burning
amorous passion she sees in films and reads about in books. She
needs romance, the chance to marry and start a family. To that
end, she joins a speed-dating club, seeing this as the most efficient
way of meeting her soul mate. She thinks she has struck lucky
with the man this brings her into contact with. Jean-Luc is
good-looking, intelligent and considerate. Alas, first
impressions can be very deceptive. After this disappointment,
Eloïse’s confidence is further shattered when she learns that she
has a tumour...
Film Review
Jean-Marc Moutout’s follow-up to his well-received debut feature Violence des échanges en milieu
tempéré (2003) is a similarly wry piece of
social commentary, this time centred on the difficulty of forming
long-term relationships in a society where individuals are increasingly
unable to commit and communicate their true feelings. As in his
first film, Moutout deftly avoids the familiar clichés and
offers a work that is original, humane and troubling, a kind of pungent
and twisted fairytale in which a woman’s search for her Prince Charming
comes close to driving her out of her mind and which ends on a note of
intense irony. Not your conventional romantic drama.La Fabrique des sentiments is provocative, veering towards the outright cynical, but it is also astute, compelling and worryingly close to the mark in its portrayal of grown adults struggling to form an emotional bond. The existential quandary in which the heroine finds herself as she attempts to balance her professional and emotional needs is brought home by the film’s very distinctive dreamlike composition, which blurs reality and imagination to the point that the two become indistinguishable. Moutout’s clinically cold mise-en-scène is appropriate for the story, reflecting the dearth of romanticism and emotionality in contemporary society, and this is beautifully complemented by the arresting contributions from the three lead actors, Elsa Zylberstein, Jacques Bonnaffé and Bruno Putzulu. In one of her most mesmerising performances to date, Elsa Zylberstein regales us with a complex portrayal of a modern woman whose world is turned on its head when she awakens to her primitive needs, the need to commit to one individual and start a family. Putzulu is the obvious soul mate - attractive, romantic and likeable; Bonnaffé is a far less appealing proposition - gauche, inarticulate, a tad grouchy and overbearing. Naturally, being human and so easily seduced by today’s facile notion of where beauty lies, Zylberstein’s character is deceived by first impressions; her simplistic idea of what love looks like inevitably sends her down a few blind alleys before she reaches her final destination. With subtlety, intelligence and barbed compassion, La Fabrique des sentiments reaffirms Shakespeare’s wise observation, that the course of true love never did run smooth, but is it also saying something more controversial, that in our atomistic, self-reliant society old fashioned notions of romance and commitment are, if not already dead, perilously close to extinction..? © James Travers 2011 Write a review for this film... User Comments
What do you think of this film?
Related links
Recent DVD releases
|
Credits
Similar films:
If you like this film you may also like the following: Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (2007) Le Colonel Chabert (1994) Crustacés et coquillages (2005) Les Destinées sentimentales (2000) Éloge de l’amour (2001) L’Ennui (1998) Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) Fin août, début septembre (1998) Joueuse (2009) Lady Chatterley (2006) Mon ange (2004) Le Premier venu (2008) Trois places pour le 26 (1988) Trop belle pour toi (1989) |


