Film Review
Michel Piccoli is a man who needs no introduction. One of the busiest
and most highly thought of actors of stage and screen in France, he has appeared in over 150 films and
is one of the most recognisable faces in French cinema, renowned for
his appearances in such classic films as
Belle de jour (1967),
Les Choses de la vie (1970) and
Milou en mai (1990).
But being a world class actor is not enough for Piccoli - he
has also had a hankering to be a film director. He finally
got round to making his feature debut in 1997 with this idiosyncratic
portrait of a worryingly dysfunctional French family. Prior to this,
he had directed a short insert in the Amnesty International
anthology
Contre l'oubli (1991) and a short film
entitled
Train de nuit (1994).
Rather than play things safe and opt for the kind of film
that someone might actually want to pay to watch, Piccoli
fashions himself as the
grand auteur and does just
about everything a first-time filmmaker can do to alienate his audience.
Virtually plotless and wallowing in its clumsy approximation to
cinéma vérité,
Alors voilà, looks
like a poor man's attempt at
imitating a Maurice Pialat or Jean-Luc Godard film. It hardly looks as if the film
was scripted at all - in fact you could easily believe that
Piccoli and his cast improvised the whole thing in a matter of hours,
without even having so much as discussed the project beforehand.
It is to Piccoli's credit that he should attempt something so
unusual for his first feature but the film just reeks of
amateurishness and is as lacking in charm as it is in
real artistry. No doubt encouraged by the sycophants, Piccoli
persevered in his new art and followed this with the marginally better
La Plage noire (2001).
© James Travers 2006
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Michel Piccoli film:
La Plage noire (2001)
Film Synopsis
Constantin is a patriarchal grandfather who insists that his three sons bring their
families to his home for a meal each week. Inevitably, this
get-together proves to be a complete nightmare
for everyone involved, but the ritual has to be gone through each and every week
without fail. Even though the three sons do not get on well together,
they agree to pool their resources to buy a lorry.
As they do so, the seemingly benign Constantin decides to indoctrinate his grandchildren in
his shady exploits...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.