Les Soeurs fâchées (2004) - film review

Louise is an aspiring author who currently works in a beauty parlour in Le Mans.  Bubbling with optimism and trepidation, she takes the train to Paris for a meeting with a publisher who has expressed an interest in her first novel.  Whilst in Paris, she stays with her elder sister, Martine, who seems to have everything a woman could ask for - a rich husband, a swanky apartment, an adorable young son.  Yet Martine is unhappy - and her sister’s unwelcome presence merely aggravates her seething resentment with her life, her husband and the world in general...

Alexandra Leclère makes a promising directorial debut with this bittersweet portrait of two chalk and cheese sisters who are driven to reconcile their deep-seated differences in a period of mid-life crisis.  The film begins, rather disappointingly, in the manner of a cheap comedy, with a salvo of silly gags and the most gratuitous swathe of clichés.  Around the mid-point, it becomes an altogether different kind of beast as the character flaws of the two protagonists are subtly exposed, the tragedy of their past lives revealed, making what is to come a genuinely engaging story, albeit one that is still marred by caricature and some unnecessary excursions into the realm of vaudeville.

The film’s main asset is its excellent cast.  Catherine Frot and Isabelle Huppert (two of the most talented actors working in French cinema today) make a perfect contrast as the two sisters who seem destined for mutually assured destruction as one unwittingly pushes the other ever closer to breaking point.  The candour, vivacity and vulnerability of Frot’s character make a perfect counterpoint to the austere emotional sterility and spitefulness of Huppert’s.  Both actors bring conviction and pathos to their portrayals, giving a depiction of a sibling relationship that is both bewilderingly complex and endearingly comical, yet also believable and ultimately rather tragic.  If only the script were a little more sophisticated, the characters more fully developed, this would have been a truly exceptional film.  Even with its faults, Les Soeurs fâchées is still an engaging and poignant film that is directed with a certain panache and the occasional touch of brilliance.

© James Travers 2007

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