La Petite Lili (2003) - film review

Each summer, successful actress Mado spends her holiday in the company of her family at her home in the country.  This year, she invites her boyfriend, Brice, a one-time actor who directed her latest film, to stay with her elderly brother, Simon, and son Julien.  The latter has aspirations of being a filmmaker himself but despises the commercialisation which Mado and Brice have, in his eyes, sold out to.  One day, Julien shows his family a short film he has made and in which stars Lili, a young woman with whom he is infatuated.  Lili is determined to be an actress and is all too willing to swap Julien for Brice if it will serve her ambitions.  This rejection leads Julien to have a nervous breakdown.  Four years pass.  Lili is now a famous young actress and Julien is married and a commercial film director.  Lili is surprised when she discovers that her former lover is making a film about the summer they last spent together, and even more surprised when she learns that he has intentionally decided not to cast her in her real-life role…

Claude Miller “does Chekhov” in this aesthetically rich but emotionally sparse reflection on life and filmmaking.  Although the film effectively captures the mood and themes of Chekhov’s play “The Seagull”, cleverly updating the story to modern day France, it feels for the most part like a dry, intellectual exercise in stage-to-screen transposition.  Certainly when you compares this with some of Miller’s earlier work (L’Effronté , La Petite voleuse, etc.), you can’t help but notice a lack of emotional attachment and an off-putting whiff of artistic excess.

The film is strongest in its first “act”, where the characters and their relationships are carefully and convincing developed.  The quality of the acting is exemplary, as you would expect from such a high calibre cast (Jean-Pierre Marielle is perfect Chekhov material and Ludivine Sagnier continues to show huge promise).  In addition, the location photography is beautiful, adding greatly to the mood, conveying a sense of suppressed conflict and tension beneath a seemingly calm exterior.

Things go badly wrong in the film’s second act, when the drama fast-forwards four years and we see how the characters have moved on.  The point Miller is making is an obvious one, concerning the rejection of ideals in pursuit of personal fulfilment.  Unfortunately, there is no real sense that the characters have developed over the four year interval.  They are behaving differently, but there is no real sense of an internal transformation, and certainly no credible rationale for the changes we see.  In fact, you don’t feel that any time has passed, but a gaping absence in the narrative is painfully visible.  Why has Julien changed to become the thing he most despised?  How did Lili make it onto the front cover of Elle?  And how did her relationship with Brice turn out?

Rather than offer any real exposition, the film concludes with a final act in which Julien is seen making a film that paints his re-interpretation of his fateful summer of four years ago.  This includes some cringe-inducing over-indulgence of the worst kind – and you don’t know whether to weep or laugh when Michel Piccoli enters the frame in yet another of his chummy cameo roles.  A sequence that should be laden with irony feels at best superfluous, at worst, needlessly contrived.

In summary, La Petite Lili is (like much of Claude Miller’s work) an intriguing film, but it doesn’t live up to its expectations – despite a great cast and a rather good re-interpretation of a Chekhov masterpiece.  Whilst it may appeal to the eye and to the intellect, the film doesn’t quite work as a coherent and emotionally engaging piece of drama, and its use of irony is far too unsubtle and clumsy to be truly effective.

© James Travers 2005

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