Film Review
Director Elise Girard's follow-up to her well-received autobiographical debut
piece
Belleville Tokyo (2010) is somewhat lighter in tone, an engaging
and thoughtful exploration of a platonic relationship between a young woman
and a man old enough to be her grandfather. With an admirable delicacy
and lightness of touch,
Drôles d'oiseaux probes facets of romantic
involvement that cinema has a had a tendency to steer clear of in recent
years and convinces us that there is far more to love than the mere satiation
of a primitive physical yearning. The film has some shortcomings on
both the writing and directing fronts and at times it leaves you with the
feeling that it doesn't develop its central themes as fully as it might.
But for all that it is an engaging work that reaffirms Girard's talents
and makes contact with the work of the Nouvelle Vague generation without
making this too blisteringly obvious.
The film's most inspired touch is the casting of Jean Sorel and Lolita Chammah
in the lead roles, two actors that outwardly seem so different and yet somehow
carry with them the same tenebrous mystique hinting at profound inner complexities
that we can only guess at. Despite his impressive list of credits,
Sorel remains a surprisingly unknown quantity. If he is remembered
today, it is most likely for his portrayal of Catherine Deneuve's frigid
aristocratic husband in Luis Buñuel's
Belle de jour (1967).
Now in his ninth decade, the actor retains his singular aloof charm and astonishing
good looks, and is just as unfathomable as he was in his younger years.
It is up to the winsome but equally enigmatic Chammah to prise open the clam
of Sorel's sealed persona in this gently understated 'getting to know you'
romantic drama, and who better than the captivating daughter of one of France's
most revered actresses, Isabelle Huppert, to attempt this feat? Looking
more like her mother with every film she makes, Chammah would seem to be
following Huppert's warped trajectory into off-kilter roles encroaching on
the more perverse and surprising aspects of human nature.
The electric rapport between the film's two leads more than compensates for
the occasional lapses on Girard's part, and what might well have ended up
as a fairly mundane variation on a May to December romance acquires a somewhat
deeper meaning when it contrasts the attitudes of the protagonists to political
causes. Part of the fascination that Chammah's character has for Sorel's
is an obvious need to account for her lack of political interest and understand
how it was possible that an earlier generation could be so intensely involved
in the momentous events of its day. It's a shame that Girard doesn't
make more of this because it is evidently the most interesting and honestly
presented aspect of the film. The question remains largely unanswered,
but it's good to see it being raised, particularly as we now seem to be moving
into an era when the under 30s are becoming ever more engaged with politics
- and with good reason.
The influence of Girard's Nouvelle Vague forebears is apparent not just in
the film's canny fusion of romance and politics, but more visibly in its
use of its Paris setting to express the inner fragility of the protagonists.
Like Truffaut in
Les 400
coups and Rivette in
Paris nous appartient,
the capital, filmed with an exquisite melancholic beauty by Renato Berta,
says more than any quantity of dialogue as to how the equally rudderless
Mavie and Georges feel in their unsettled, unfulfilled and disconnected lives.
Drôles d'oiseaux lacks the refined auteur sense and
sustained confidence to impress as a truly significant film but it is, through the arresting
contributions of its leading performers, an involving and emotionally satisfying
work. What it offers is an authentic exploration of a relationship
between two mismatched individuals who are drawn to one another not by the
readily understandable force of desire, but by something far more subtle
and profound.
© James Travers 2017
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Film Synopsis
Mavie, 27, is an attractive young woman from the provinces who has just arrived
in Paris, tentatively groping for a sense of direction in her hitherto aimless
life. Whilst trying to find an apartment of her own, she moves in temporarily
with a friend. One day, she comes across a bookshop that no one seems
to know about and falls under the spell of its aged owner, Georges.
Even though Georges is fifty years her senior and strikes her as the archetypal
cantankerous old man, always moaning and miserable, Mavie finds him a fascinating
creature and can hardly fail to be impressed by his erudition. It is
the start of a singular friendship between two people who appear to have
nothing whatsoever in common. Then Mavie meets Roman, a man of her
own age, and is soon caught up in a whirlwind romance...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.