Le Coeur fantôme (1996) - film review

Philippe, a middle-aged artist, leaves his wife and children when he learns that his wife has a lover.  He consoles himself with the company of prostitutes until he meets Justine, a young woman who instantly falls in love with him.  Philippe’s new found happiness with Justine begins to fade when he starts to regret leaving his children.  By reflecting on his parents’ separation he tries to understand his own situation.

Although painfully slow-moving and awkwardly introspective in places, Le Coeur fantôme offers a convincing portrait of a man caught up in a mid-life crisis, uncertain of his future and scarcely able to comprehend his past.  Its director, Philippe Garrel, projects onto the film his own painful real-life experiences, and even reinforces the auto-biographical element by casting his father in the role of the principal character’s father.  Markedly different in style to most contemporary French dramas, this film has a distinctive brooding intensity and dark existentialist poetry which sets it part, but at the risk of alienating those spectators who prefer films to have greater narrative coherence and less ambiguity.  Overall, it is an enigmatic but not entirely satisfying film.

© James Travers 2003

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