Film Review
After a weird excursion into Italian comedy with
Tous les soleils (2011),
director Philippe Claudel is on safer ground with his third feature, an
elegant mélange of psychological thriller and intimate drama
that boasts some stunning performances and a twisted foray into that
most mysterious of phenomena, the male menopause.
Avant l'hiver (a.k.a.
Before the Winter Chill) has the
character depth and literary sophistication of Claudel's first feature,
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime
(2008), but it is a much darker work, its familiar plot ideas refreshed
with an unsettling garnish of melancholia and quiet expectancy.
The storyline is unlikely to win any awards for originality but this
scarcely matters. What sells the film and makes it so compelling
is Claudel's evident fascination with the more mysterious facets of
human nature. With the skill and precision of the neurosurgeon
who is the main character in the drama Claudel cuts deep into the human
psyche and reveals something about ourselves that we perhaps would
rather not see.
The finesse of Claudel's writing and direction is well-served by a cast
of excellent pedigree, headed by Daniel Auteuil, dazzling in one of his
most challenging roles to date. Overweight and looking every bit
the grouchy old man, Auteuil has finally rid himself of the sympathetic
loser image that has stuck to him throughout most of his career since
his star-making role as Ugolin in
Jean de Florette (1986).
It's hard to sympathise with Auteuil's portrayal of a sixty-something
surgeon succumbing to a belated mid-life crisis. There is
something slightly nauseous about his character's pursuit of a much
younger woman, and yet, as the misleading first impressions melt away,
we begin to see things from his perspective and a far more complex,
troubled character emerges, one that Auteuil is more than equipped to
portray with heartrending sincerity.
Kristin Scott Thomas has a far less central role than she did on
Claudel's first feature but her presence is just as keenly felt, with a
performance that is every bit as nuanced and beguiling. Beneath
the marble façade which Thomas's character puts up for the sake
of bourgeois respectability there is a fragility which gently ripples
through the actress's performance early in the film before being laid
bare with shocking realism later on. As the 'other woman'
Leïla Bekhti is somewhat overshadowed by the acting giants
standing beside her but she comes into her own in the second half
of the film, and hers proves to be the most fascinating and
unpredictable character on offer. Likewise Richard Berry takes us
by surprise with a solid character performance that rates as one of his
finest to date. Like a good wine, Berry evidently improves with
age.
With a stiflingly glacial elegance that evokes both the
bourgeois-baiting thrillers of Claude Chabrol and ironic middleclass
dramas of Claude Sautet,
Avant
l'hiver is an unusually stylised film with a hard-to-define
allure. Whilst it may not be as polished and easy to engage with
as Claudel's first film, it is more imaginatively directed and has
substantially more depth to it. Claudel is not afraid to let some
questions go unanswered and so there is a teasing ambiguity to all of
his protagonists, which adds to their mystique and realism. A
mature, intelligent drama, this is a film that demands some patience as
its first half does drag a little in places, but if you stay with it
the effort is amply rewarded in the end, with a cruel but handsomely
constructed payoff.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
Paul is a successful brain surgeon who, since he married Lucie, has never
known a day's unhappiness. He has a comfortable home, a loving family
and a job he adores. Everything has turned out for him as well as he
could possibly have hoped. But then, one day, something happens to
shake his certainties. He begins receiving flowers from an anonymous
sender. Not long afterwards, he discovers that he has a secret admirer
in an attractive young woman named Lou. She tells him that she is forever
in his debt after he performed a life-saving operation on her some years
ago. Even though he is sixty and she is barely twenty, Paul finds himself
strongly attracted to this mysterious woman and he begins to wonder whether
his marriage to Lucie was purely one of mutual convenience...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.