Film Review
Writer-turned-director Samuel Benchetrit turns dreary suburban life
into something akin to a fairytale in
Asphalte,
his fifth and by far best film to date, weaving together three
improbable encounters between lonely people, two of which are lifted
directed from his 2005 anthology of stories,
Début des Chroniques de l'asphalte.
Benchetrit is an eclectic filmmaker apparently willing to tackle any
subject under the sun, but he has so far struggled to make much of an
impact. His promising thriller
J'ai toujours rêvé
d'être un gangster (2007) was followed by two
dissimilar films -
Chez Gino
(2011) and
Un voyage (2014) -
that were marred by a surfeit of self-indulgence and the lack of a
strong concept.
Asphalte more
than makes up for this - an elegantly knitted together patchwork of
slices of life that manages to be funny, heart-warming and incredibly
true to life.
Anyone familiar with contemporary French cinema will know that the
suburbs are a grim place, steeped in social deprivation, violence and
solitude. These days, the French word for suburbs -
les banlieues - sounds like an
expression of disgust. Benchetrit's film reminds us of this fact
with its depressingly grey palette and signs of urban decay everywhere
we look, but, grim though it is, the suburbs are not the desolate
wilderness we have come to expect. The unlikely friendships that
spring up spontaneously between three ill-matched pairs of people offer
hope that even in the most life-sapping of environments there are
little specks of magic to be found, like buttercups pushing their way
up through cracks in a badly maintained pavement.
It's the mostly unlikely of places we would expect to find Isabelle
Huppert - or rather an alter ego who hasn't been quite so fortunate in
her career and ends up like Gloria Swanson in
Sunset
Boulevard (1950), living in dismal solitude with nothing but
her memories to keep her company. Huppert shares a landing with a
teenager (played by Jules Benchetrit, the director's son) who is
lumbered with the William Holden job of drawing her out of herself and
rekindling her dormant career. If this sounds far-fetched, it is
banal compared with a parallel story strand in which an Algerian woman
befriends an astronaut who has just crash-landed on her roof.
Absurd as the situation is, the actors (Tassadit Mandi and Michael
Pitt) play it out as if nothing could be more ordinary, and we can only
be moved by the close bond that develops between the two characters as
they shake hands across the cultural divide. Meanwhile, a
wheelchair bound Gustave Kervern pursues a weird kind of romance with
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, an affair that takes some odd turns as the
characters' fetishes spark off another unlikely friendship.
Helped by some sterling performances from an impeccable cast and some
very subtle writing,
Asphalte
is an enjoyably quirky off-kilter comedy-drama that brims with
charm and truth. The clichés are kicked well and truly out
of sight as the film zooms in on the relationships that develop between
three pairs of individuals who start out looking like archetypes but
soon become fully fledged human beings. Whilst it doesn't exactly
sell the idea of life in the suburbs, certainly not in low-cost housing
estates where the lifts are always breaking down and people are afraid
to open their front doors, the film convinces us that even in this
loveless hell hole the sun does occasionally come out to shine.
© James Travers 2015
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Film Synopsis
After too strenuous a workout on his exercise bike, professional
photographer Sternkowitz ends up in a wheelchair. Unwilling
to chip in for repairs to the lift of the apartment block where he
lives, he is barred from using it and so only comes out at night.
On one of his nocturnal excursions, he meets a lonely nurse and
persuades her to be his next model. Jeanne, a retired actress who
was big in the 1980s, has just moved into the same building. As
she unpacks her belongings she strikes up a friendship with one of her
neighbours - a teenage boy, Charly, whose spends most of his time alone
whilst his mother is away. Charly encourages Jeanne to resume her
career. Another resident of the apartment block, an immigrant
named Madame Hamida, is surprised when an American astronaut comes
knocking on her door. With her son in prison, Madame Hamida is
only too happy to lodge the spacesuit-clad John McKenzie whilst he
waits for NASA to come and collect him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.