Film Review
François Favrat's third feature brings a touch of the Claude
Chabrols to his moodily atmospheric adaptation of Tatiana De Rosnay's
best-selling novel
Boomerang,
the result being a reasonably effective fusion of family drama and
thriller that makes up for the disappointment of the director's
previous half-baked thriller
La Sainte Victoire
(2009). De Rosnay's novels are hot property at the moment, with
one already successfully adapted for cinema as
Elle s'appelait Sarah (2010) by
Gilles Paquet-Brenner and three more big screen adaptations in the
offing. Favrat's film condenses its author's sprawling novel into
an intense but fairly routine murder mystery which clearly owes
something to Chabrol's dark studies in family intrigue, whilst slipping
in the odd gratuitous allusion to Hitchcock's films here and there.
One hard-to-forgive mistake that Favrat and his co-screenwriter
Emmanuel Courcol (co-author of four previous films by Philippe Lioret,
notably
Welcome (2009)) make is to
underline each and every plot twist, not giving the spectator much of
an opportunity to work things out for himself. It's as if the
film's authors cannot trust the audience to stay the course, and so we
get a tonne of exposition weighing down most of the narrative with
irrelevant and distracting detail. The film's excessive use of
flashback hardly helps matters and merely clutters things up to the
point where self-editing with a DVD remote control becomes almost
obligatory (an option which is, alas, not available to those watching
the film in cinemas). It's a credit to Favrat's skill as a
director - first revealed in his debut feature
Le Rôle de sa vie (2004),
an astute commentary on the vacuous cult of celebrity - that he can
take such an unwieldy script, overcomplicate it with unnecessary
flashbacks, and still end up with a reasonably slick and compelling
drama, although much of the credit for this is probably down to his
talented cast headed by Mr Flavour-of-the-Month, Laurent
Lafitte.
Lafitte has already demonstrated his flair for comedy in one of the
year's French box office winners, Martin Bourboulon's
Papa
ou maman (2015), but here, in a more demanding dramatic
role, he is completely transformed and delivers a far darker, far more
intense performance than you might expect. It's mostly Lafitte's
gripping central performance that carries the film, which becomes as
much a study in personal obsession as a family intrigue as his
character becomes increasingly persuaded that there is more to his
mother's death than meets the eye. As Lafitte's more level-headed
younger sister, Mélanie Laurent appears either wilfully deluded
or a beacon of sanity against which her brother's growing irrationality
is to be measured. There is sufficient ambiguity (just) for us to
believe that Lafitte is in the throes of a nervous breakdown and that
the mystery he is hung up on is merely one that he has invented for
himself. When the truth is revealed in the final act it is hard
not to be a tad disappointed - Favrat's layering of intrigue upon
intrigue, with Lafitte's performance further muddying the waters, had
led us to expect a slightly craftier resolution than the one the film
ends up pulling out of the hat.
If the thriller intrigue doesn't quite come up to scratch, at least the
film manages to deliver on the character front, thanks again to some
strong performances. Playing Lafitte's father is a fiercely
ambiguous Wladimir Yordanoff, who, in common with many grown-up
fathers, still treats his offspring as if they were troublesome
infants. Bulle Ogier brings her unique brand of feminine mystique
to her portrayal of Lafitte's taciturn grandmother, whose reluctance to
rake over old coals is both suspicious and suggestive of something very
sinister. Most interesting perhaps is the relationship that
develops between Lafitte's character and a woman he hardly knows but in
whom he places considerable trust, his fellow investigator played by an
enigmatic Audrey Dana - is it possible she has an ulterior motive in
helping Antoine?
Boomerang is a competently
realised thriller-drama hybrid that is sustained by its full-blooded
performances and some stylish production design, although its
heavy-handed script prevents it from being a sure-fire winner.
The Noirmoutier location has an austere beauty that serves the film
well, its dual character - spookily alluring in some shots, bleakly
sinister in others - mirroring that of the central protagonist as
his curiosity turns into a destructive obsession. If Favrat had
concentrated more on character and less on plot, if he hadn't felt the
necessity to overstate everything to the point that you feel he is
making the film for a dim-witted five-year-old, this could have been
one of the niftiest French thrillers of the year, rather than one that
frequently feels like an over-earnest trudge over all too familiar
territory.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Having just turned forty, Antoine meets up with his sister Agathe for a meal
in a restaurant. Antoine needs something to distract him from his recent
messy divorce and Agathe wants to remember their mother, who died exactly
thirty years ago in mysterious circumstances. Both of these needs,
they agree, can be met by a brief return visit to Noirmoutier, the coastal
town where they used to spend their holidays as children. It was also
the place where their mother met her untimely death. Before reaching
his destination, Antoine has an accident, which has the effect of bringing
to the surface long forgotten memories of the time when his mother died.
Antoine has an uneasy feeling that his mother's death was not an accident,
and this appears to be backed up when his family's former maid tells him
that her corpse was found ten kilometres away from the house. In Noirmoutier,
Antoine gets on friendly terms with a pathologist, Angèle, who helps
him in his impromptu investigation into his mother's death. He cannot
understand why his relatives are so reticent about the matter and this makes
him more determined than ever to discover the truth. Agathe fears that
her brother may be heading for a complete mental breakdown...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.