Selon Charlie (2006) - film review

A coastal town is the venue for a conference hosted by Mathieu, a renowned research scientist.  Mathieu’s arrival in the town is watched on television by a former collaborator of his, Pierre, a man who was once a capable scientist but who is now reduced to teaching in a school.  Charlie is one of Pierre’s favourite pupils, a promising eleven year old who lately has been less interested in his studies.  Charlie is going through a difficult phase, which his father, Serge, in the throes of a midlife crisis, can only worsen.   The town’s mayor, Jean-Louis Bertagnat, has his own problems.  Having grown tired of the pomp and ceremony of his position, he takes refuge in the arms of his mistress, a young student.  Then there is Joss, a small-time crook who is planning his next big robbery...

An unwieldy, barely watchable monstrosity of a film.   Over the past decade, Nicole Garcia has proven herself a very capable filmmaker, winning plaudits for her films which explore the nuances and complexities of human relationships with finesse, compassion and a certain cruelty.  Selon Charlie could have been her masterpiece, an incisive examination of the male psyche in an era when the role of men in our society has never been more ambiguous and precarious.  Alas, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

The film has an exceptional cast which includes four of France’s most highly regarded actors today - Jean-Pierre Bacri, Vincent Lindon, Benoît Magimel and Benoît Poelvoorde.  Yet, in spite of the efforts of everyone involved, the film fails to ring true, fails to capture the audience’s attention and just feels like an overblown, self-indulgent mess, lacking structure and coherence, devoid of dramatic tension and any real human feeling.  Twenty minutes into the film, I was almost in the embrace of Morpheus.  Thirty minutes after that, I was wishing to be eaten alive by Cerberus.

The fault lies not in Garcia’s mise-en-scène, which is as assured and effective as ever, nor in the performances, which extract as much pathos and realism as is humanly possible from what the actors are given to work with.  The film’s failure derives almost entirely from the script, which fails to draw the various strands of the story to a satisfying and coherent whole and, worse, fails to make the plethora of principal characters anything more than the vaguest of caricatures, like outlines glimpsed in a snowstorm.  An instantly forgettable film, Selon Charlie is Nicole Garcia’s one and only major let-down to date.

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