Film Review
Marc Fitoussi's follow-up to his thoroughly engaging debut feature
La Vie d'artiste (2007) is a
similarly waspish satire on contrasting life styles which offers French
cinema diva Isabelle Huppert her best comedic role to date. After
the intense dramatic performances she gave in Benoît Jacquot's
Villa
Amalia (2009) and Claire Denis's
White Material (2010),
Copacabana must have come as a
welcome therapy to an actress who is famously renowned for playing
maverick females with a penchant for the perverse. Fitoussi
claims he created the role of Babou, the archetypal middle-aged
adolescent, specifically for Huppert, and this might explain why the
actress inhabits the part so perfectly and gives it so much oomph.
Babou may be a force of nature, contemptuous of authority and totally
incapable of assuming any responsibility in her life (including
supporting her daughter), but she is someone we can readily identify
with and, to some extent, admire. Not for her the jaded
hypocrisies of bourgeois morality and the blinkered self-interest which
separates the middle-classes from those at the lower end of the social
spectrum. Babou is a free spirit who just cannot help acting on
impulse. The same woman who casually trashes a chocolate shop
when she is turned down for a job is also capable of exceptional acts
of generosity, as well as those of outright folly. She serves as
a kind of litmus paper for the society in which she exists, one that
shows up the extent of the moral deficiency of those less honest and
compassionate individuals who cross her path. It is a role that
is tailor-made for Huppert and she gives it her best shot, making Babou
a complex character who is both engaging and yet frustratingly
indefinable - a charming paradox.
Playing the part of Babou's more level-headed daughter is Huppert's
real-life daughter Lolita Chammah. Huppert and Chammah had
previously appeared together on screen in Claude Chabrol's
Une Affaire de femmes (1988)
and Laurence Ferreira Barbosa's
La Vie moderne (2000) and they
make an astonishing contrast, not just physically but also in the way
they project their very different personalities, Huppert a natural
tragicomic extrovert, Chammah the cold and restrained
ingénue. It is evident that the two women have an
emotional bond, but it is just as apparent they are separated by a gulf
that they appear unable to bridge. Of course it may simply be
that Huppert and Chammah are immensely talented actors, but you do
sense that they are revealing something of their own relationship in
the film, much as Gérard and Guillaume Depardieu did in Jacob
Berger's
Aime ton père (2002).
Copacabana isn't quite up to
the high standard of Fitoussi's previous film - many of the secondary
characters are a tad too clichéd and the pace is a little uneven
in parts - but, thanks mainly to Huppert's arresting central
performance, it makes an effective and enjoyable social satire.
It probably isn't the best advertisement that the Belgian town of
Ostend could have hoped for (it'll probably set the town's tourist
industry back by at least fifty years), and it doesn't do much for
those who earn their crust selling timeshare apartments (other than to
expose the cynical brutality of the industry they work for). But
as a king-sized dollop of good-natured entertainment, elegantly laced
with a piquant sauce of barbed social commentary, it certainly hits the
mark.
© James Travers 2013
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Film Synopsis
Babou is one of life's eternal adolescents. Unable to hold down a
job for more than five minutes, she has spent the last few years
travelling around the world doing what she does best: enjoying
herself. When she finally returns to France, she cannot
understand why her daughter Esméralda is so antagonistic towards
her. She is even more surprised when Esméralda tells her
she is about to get married and has no intention of inviting her to the
wedding. In a desperate attempt to win back her daughter's
respect, Babou gets herself a job selling timeshare apartments in the
grim coastal town of Ostend. By using her initiative, Babou makes
an impression on her superiors and soon lands a cushy promotion, to the
disgust of her more experienced colleagues. When she sees a young
homeless couple living on the street, Babou cannot prevent herself from
letting them spend the night in one of the apartments she is charged
with selling. Naturally, her employers are not impressed by this
gesture of charity...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.