Lady Jane (2008)

Lady Jane is a French thriller film first released in 2008, directed by Robert Guédiguian.  The film stars Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan, Yann Trégouët and Frédérique Bonnal.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In 1960s Marseilles, three tearaway adolescents - Muriel, François and René - make a dishonest living by selling stolen fur coats.  They call a sudden end to their criminal exploits when they kill a jeweller and decide never to see each other again.  Many years later, Muriel is the proud owner of a posh boutique named Lady Jane.  Her life could not be better - until one day her son is kidnapped.  Unable to pay the ransom demanded by the kidnappers, she has no choice but to call upon the help of her childhood friends François and René...

After a brief digression which allowed him to get to grips with the last days of François Mitterand and his Armenian roots - Le Promeneur du champ de Mars (2005) and Le Voyage en Arménie (2006) - director Robert Guédiguian returns to his home town of Marseilles for his first genre film, a slick film noir which is endowed with a valuable moral for our time.  With the traditional French polar enjoying something of a comeback in recent years, Guédiguian effectively exploits the mechanics of this most well-worn of genres to deliver a compelling and thought-provoking drama that will surely have mainstream appeal, and not just in France.  The backdrop to this film is modern Marseilles, but a Marseilles that could not be further from the sun-drenched port that is seen in the director’s previous films.  The inter-weaving of oppressive nocturnal sequences with daytime scenes filmed in a muted palette of cold greys, blues and browns amply conveys the desolation that haunts the three main protagonists and threatens to engulf them as they are drawn ever further down the dark path of a deadly personal vendetta.  For Robert Guédiguian’s darkest and cruellest exploration of human nature to date, the film noir aesthetic is entirely appropriate.

Once again, Guédiguian is able to call upon the services of his loyal troupe of actors, Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, all perfectly suited to their roles and all delivering a performance of the highest calibre.  The rapport which the three actors have now built up (having worked together on ten of Guédiguian’s films) serves the film well, not only bolstering its sense of reality but also making  it easier for the spectator to engage with the three main characters.  The taciturn and aloof Meylan makes an effective counterpoint to the more impulsive and expressive Darroussin; whilst the former is clearly reluctant to return to his rebellious youth, the latter  evidently relishes the opportunity, but soon realises the extent of his delusion.  The darkly contemplative Ascaride remains an enigma right up until the film’s shocking denouement, where the pieces of the intricately crafted puzzle come crashing together and effectively resolve the mystery.  Such is the power of Ascaride’s performance that, in this searing moment of revelation, you feel the full force of her character’s emotions and are impelled to feel what she feels as she comes to terms with the extent of her folly.

Each of Robert Guédiguian’s films has a carefully honed social or political message, and this one is no exception.  Without labouring the point to the extent that it gets in the way of the narrative, Lady Jane exposes the futility of vengeance, showing us that nothing good can come from slavish adherance to the old philosophy of seeking an eye for an eye.  In the film’s powerful and beautifully rendered climax, where an understandably overwrought mother is brought face to face with her son’s murderer, we are confronted with the utter meaningless of revenge, persuaded that one crime can never just another.  It is only when Muriel (Ascaride) sees the truth of this and realises that she is empowered to end this cycle of despair and can at last rid herself of the corrosive darkness that has blighted her life.  Far better to make a fresh start in living sunlight than to go on rehearsing the misfortunes of the past in a dead night that can never end.

© James Travers 2011

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