Olivier, Olivier (1992)

Olivier, Olivier is a French thriller film first released in 1992, directed by Agnieszka Holland.  The film stars Frédéric Quiring, Faye Gatteau, Emmanuel Morozof, Brigitte Roüan and François Cluzet.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


The Duvals are a typical French family, leading an apparently peaceful existence in the heart of rural France.  But appearances can be deceptive.  The father, Serge, has grown tired of his dead-end job as a country vet and vents his frustration on his increasingly neurotic wife Elisabeth.  To compensate for her husband’s brutality, Elisabeth drenches her nine-year-old son Olivier in affection, which only aggravates the situation, annoying Serge whilst making her daughter Nadine jealous.  One day, Olivier goes off on his bicycle to take some provisions to his sick grandmother.  When he doesn’t return, Elisabeth is thrown into a panic and her relationship with Serge completely falls apart.  Inspector Druot leads a police investigation but fails to find the missing boy.  Either he has run away or he has been abducted, possibly murdered.  Six years later, Druot, now based in Paris, arrests a fifteen-year-old male prostitute who bears a passing resemblance to the boy Olivier Duval.  Also named Olivier, the adolescent is reluctant to talk about his past but clearly knows a great deal about the Duvals.  Elisabeth Duval instantly recognises him as his son and insists that he returns to the family home.  Coincidentally, Serge Duval chooses this time to return home after having spent the past six years working in Africa.  It appears that all the animosities and anxieties of the past have been blown away.  Serge is as delighted to be reacquainted with his missing son as Elisabeth.  The only one who is not cheered by Olivier’s return is Nadine.  She finds it hard to accept that the stranger is her brother and at first she is antagonistic towards him.  But then, she begins to find him strangely attractive...

Acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland followed up her startling wartime drama Europa Europa (1990) with this equally compelling psychological drama which takes an acutely ironic look at the dysfunctional family.  Based on a story that Holland read about in the French newspapers, Olivier, Olivier is a darkly seductive film which draws amusement from the fact that given the choice between a fiction with an implausible happy ending and a factual story with a more probable tragic denouement, most people will find the former much easier to believe.  How else can we explain the success of Hollywood?

Holland’s subtly stylish mise-en-scène gives the film the feel of dark, brooding fairytale.  There is no point trying to analyse the contrived plot too closely – if you do, the film will most probably loose all sense of credibility and end up resembling a farce.  The plot may be absurd but Bernard Zitzermann’s cinematography and the gripping performances from a high calibre cast make the story harrowingly believable.  Brigitte Roüan is so convincing as the overwrought mother that you either want to hug her or belt her; thank goodness François Cluzet is around to do both.  

Grégoire Colin deserves a special mention for his portrayal of the adolescent Olivier, which is perhaps what most makes the film such an unsettling portrait of the power of seduction.  For all the charm that Colin exudes there is also a touch of cruel malevolence, just enough for us to wonder whether his character is the missing child or a cunning impostor.   Of course, in true Hitchcockian fashion, Holland doesn’t entirely resolve the mystery until the very last scene.  Naturally, it is not the ending we want and so, like the deluded mother Elisabeth, we prefer to go on believing in the fiction, because we know that stories always end happily, don’t they?

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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