Film Review
Having proven herself to be a very capable actress and author of books,
Sylvie Testud makes her directing debut with this offbeat
comedy-romance, based on a novel of the same title by Frederique
Deghelt. Despite its implausible scenario and some hard-to-miss
flaws on both the directing and acting fronts,
La Vie d'une autre is an engaging
little film that would doubtless have passed without comment were it not
for the attention-grabbing casting of Juliette Binoche and Mathieu
Kassovitz in the principal roles. Neither actor is stretched by
the subject matter but, by force of charisma alone, both elevate a
humdrum comedy to a slighter higher level and, whilst their on-screen
rapport is distinctly lacking in some crucial scenes, they do imbue the
film with sufficient charm to distract us from the deficiencies of
Testud's directing and screenwriting.
The plot is contrived and fanciful to the point of absurdity, and gets
increasingly hard to swallow as it goes on. A young woman goes to
bed with the man she has fallen in love with and wakes up to discover
that fifteen years of her life have elapsed without her knowledge of
it. It is as if she has climbed aboard a time machine and has
been projected into her own future, where she is naturally horrified to
discover what she has become - a hard-nose executive type who has
neglected her husband (maybe the plot would have been more believable
if it had featured a time machine). Just as in Dickens'
A Christmas Carol, the heroine is
so appalled by this vision of the future that she immediately sets out
to correct it. And so, having dispensed with the clumsy plot
artifices, the film can finally make landfall on sturdier territory,
concluding in classic vein with a test of the durability of love, with
some dodgy comedy crowbarred in by rent-a-gag to stop things becoming
too sweet and mushy.
Unhappy over some of the details in the original novel, Testud took it
on herself to largely rewrite it for her screenplay, and this is
presumably where it all began to go wrong, and why she had such
difficulty persuading Binoche to take on the lead role (at first the
actress declined the part). A weak screenplay does not
necessarily mean a bad film but for a first-time director it is
something of a handicap and with a lesser cast Testud would have been
well and truly sunk. Fortunately, the combined efforts of Binoche
and Kassovitz, two of French cinema's most bankable stars, salvage the
film, with the help of a top-notch supporting cast that includes such
talented performers as Danièle Lebrun, Vernon Dobtcheff and
François Berléand.
La Vie d'une autre is far from
perfect, and in places it is pretty cringeworthy, but for all its
failings it does have considerable charm and just about passes muster
for a debut piece, although you can't help wishing that Testud had stuck
with her day job.
© James Travers 2012
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Marie is 40, but when she wakes up one day she is convinced she is
25. She has forgotten fifteen years of her life. All she
can think of is the great romance that lies ahead of her, but she soon
discovers that this romance has long fizzled out. The Marie
of today is a successful businesswoman and the man she once loved has
grown to despise her. Unwilling to accept what she has become,
Marie makes up her mind to win back the one love of her life...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.