La Tendresse (2013)
Directed by Marion Hänsel

Film Review

"Are we there yet?"  It's a refrain known to every parent who has ever undertaken a car journey longer than about ten minutes with a hyperactive nipper in the back.  The self-same refrain is one that you can hardly avoid intoning (at roughly the same frequency as the aforementioned pain in the back seat) whilst watching La Tendresse, a road movie for cultured masochists proffered by Belgian's pre-eminent female film producer and director Marion Hänsel.  Hänsel's reputation hangs mainly on her 1987 feature Les Noces barbares (1987), a starkly realistic account of the breakdown in the relationship between a mother and son.   Since, she has garnered critical acclaim with such films as Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1995) and Si le vent soulève les sables (2006), although some of her more experimental offerings - such as Noir Océan (2010) - have struggled to find favour with critics and audiences.

La Tendresse is another attempt by Hänsel to push the boundaries of cinematic expression, neglecting as she does so the good will and patience of her audience.  It is essentially a mix of rom-com and road movie with next to nothing in the way of a plot, just a series of banal, slightly humorous incidents that befall a long divorced couple as they come to the aid of their grown-up son after a skiing accident.  Marilyne Canto and Olivier Gourmet make such a likeable and convincing pair of leads that for a while you hardly notice the absence of plot.  The film just coasts along amiably, its stack of true-to-life trivialities making an anaemic but tolerable substitute for a narrative.  The most exciting thing that happens is Canto managing to get herself locked in a public lavatory.  It's both the dramatic and comedic highpoint of the film, so savour it whilst it lasts.

The film's one redeeming feature is its total rejection of cliché (which is no doubt a by-product of Hänsel's over-zealous rejection of the classical dramatic form).  If this were a run-of-the-mill American rom-com, the two main characters, a divorced couple, would rekindle their erstwhile romance and end up getting together again before the credits roll.  Hänsel is wise enough to know that life is nothing like an American rom-com, and so in her far more down to Earth film we know right from the outset that there is no chance the ex-husband and ex-wife will become an item again.  They have moved on and whatever divine force it was that first brought them together has long since dissipated.  With the romantic angle hastily disposed of, Hänsel is free to explore a more nuanced kind of relationship between a man and a woman who once were in love but no longer feel that kind of attraction.  In the course of their mundane trip from Belgium to the French Alps, they discover new feelings, of tenderness and mutual understanding, tempered but not soiled by the pain of their separation fifteen years previously.

The problem is that, in her striving for 'sur le vif' realism, Hänsel ends up understating everything to the extent that her film becomes just a bland accumulation of tedious banalities.  It's odd that, for a supposed road movie, the film doesn't seem to go anywhere.  The two main characters become aware of their mutual fondness for one another, and this impacts slightly on how they treat others, but they can hardly be said to have been altered by the experience of their enforced reunion.  The film opens with a stunning aerial shot in the French Alps, with two barely perceptible specks slowly making their way across a vast expanse of ethereal whiteness.  These 'specks' are revealed to be skiers, one of whom is about to have the accident that will precipitate the  'events' of the film.  It's a fitting visual metaphor for what ensues - microscopic activity in a vast landscape of sheer nothingness.

La Tendresse is an agreeably aimless ramble that takes in some pleasant scenery and some interesting peripheral characters (cheer when Sergi López shows up unexpectedly - alas, the most exciting thing he does is turn on a car radio).  The film deserves credit for the finesse with which it handles the brittle relationships of a divorced couple and their son.  Regrettably, its lack of narrative thrust and anything resembling a payoff makes it something of an endurance test, particularly for those old-fashioned folk who like their films not be entirely plot-free.  With a less charming and capable duo than Olivier Gourmet and Marilyne Canto to keep it on the road, this latest off-piste venture from Marion Hänsel would have been a soulless trek into the wilderness.

Film Synopsis

Having been separated for fifteen years, Frans and Lisa make the journey to another country together so that they can collect their son, who has been hospitalised after a serious skiing accident.  What do they still feel for one another: indifference, resentment or jealousy?  Or maybe there is still some glimmering of friendship, perhaps even love..?