Film Review
Seven years after Bernadette Lafont's first collaboration with Patricia
Plattner,
Les Petites couleurs (2002),
the actress and director are reunited to offer up another ironic
slice-of-life about the travails of being a woman in the 21st
century. This time, Lafont takes centre stage in a familiar May
to December romantic situation, playing a feisty sixty-something
antiques dealer who falls for a handsome 25-year-old man,
sympathetically played by Pio Marmaï.
Bazar has little in the way of
originality and ambition, but it treads its well-worn ground with great
charm and breathes considerable warmth and conviction into its slightly
implausible scenario, thanks mainly to Lafont's lively screen presence.
A gentle anti-ageist comedy,
Bazar
challenges our assumptions about relationships across the generational
divide but falls short of saying anything too fresh and
provocative. Apart from giving romantically starved
grannies a cheap thrill, it is hard to divine what motivated Plattner
to make the film. Plattner's cinema is patently female-centric,
so it's no surprise that once again her female protagonists are far
more convincingly drawn and likeable than the male characters, most of
whom appear caricatured and slightly detached from the
drama. Fortunately, some inspired casting helps (partly) to
correct this imbalance.
Bernadette Lafont had just turned seventy when she made this film, but
you'd hardly guess as much, such is the vitality she brings to her
performance, which so easily evokes her early years as a wild young
thing in the films of the French New Wave. Lafont will always be
remembered as one of the most non-conformist and unpredictable of
French actresses, and her engaging portrayal of a sexagenarian falling
for a well-built hunk who is less than half her age can only reinforce
this impression.
Much of the film's poignancy lies in the fact that Lafont looks her age
but so clearly still has the spirit of a rebellious teenager - a
reminder of the sad fact of life that inwardly we never really age; it
is only our bodies that grow old and wither. This is brought home
in some touching scenes involving Lafont's character and her daughter
(a magnificent Lou Doillon) - the roles appear to be reversed and it is
the daughter who attempts to correct the wayward adolescent tendencies
of her mother.
Pio Marmaï's brooding, introspective persona (we never really get
to understand what his character thinks or feels) makes an effective
contrast with Lafont's outgoing vivacity. It is only some
weaknesses in Patricia Plattner's script which prevents the two very
capable actors from giving the film the emotional punch it needs to be
genuinely memorable. Without Lafont's feisty presence,
Bazar risks being intolerably
anaemic and vacuous. Bernadette Lafont may be in her eighth
decade, but she's still got what it takes - charisma and energy enough
to enliven any humdrum little film. Long may she continue to do
so.
© James Travers 2012
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Film Synopsis
Sixty-year-old Gabrielle is passionate about her work as an antiques
dealer. It is her life, her raison d'être, and so she is
understandably shaken when she is evicted from her shop. How
ironic that this should happen on the same day that she becomes a
grandmother! But just when Gabrielle thinks her life is over, a
gorgeous 25-year-old Portuguese man named Fred suddenly takes her
fancy. It should be impossible, but Cupid fires his arrow and the
unlikely pair cannot help falling in love...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.