Film Review
It may have started out as an honest, well-meaning attempt to confront
some of the less savoury aspects of human sexuality, but
Le Sourire fails to have even the faintest
ring of truth about it. The least satisfying of all Claude
Miller's films, it is a chore to watch and leaves a very nasty
aftertaste. The fault
lies not in the story premise, a tragicomic tale of a man at death's
door making one last frantic bid to sate his carnal appetites with a
young woman who takes pleasure in arousing geriatrics, but in its
clumsy, almost haphazard execution. The characters are too thinly drawn to be
convincing and Miller diverts our attention away from them, going from
the specific to the general, by attempting something along the lines of
a sociological documentary involving anonymous strip tease artists and
their lusting on-lookers. The result is a vague, sordid mess that
does nothing to engage our feelings or our interest.
Were it not for Jean-Pierre Marielle's typically committed performance
Le Sourire would have virtually nothing
to commend it. Neither Emmanuelle Seigner nor Richard Bohringer
appears remotely interested in what they are doing and some of the
supporting cast are so bad you wonder why they ever took up
acting. Miller aggravates the failings of a weak screenplay by indulging in some
pretty grotesque flights of fancy, none of which help the film's
coherence and credibility. With the camera fixed for far too long
on naked and semi-naked striptease performers like a gob-smacked
adolescent the film risks being mistaken for a tacky piece of
1990s erotica. Uneven, shallow and at times hopelessly pretentious,
this is Claude Miller's biggest misfire, a film that delivers only the
smallest fraction of what it promises. The curious thing is that
the director made it between two of his most inspired films,
L'Accompagnatrice (1992)
and
La Classe de neige (1998).
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Claude Miller film:
La Classe de neige (1998)
Film Synopsis
Pierre François Le Clainche is a sixty-something
neuro-psychiatrist who has just survived a near-fatal heart
attack. Against the advice of his heart-specialist, who is also
his wife, he decides to throw caution to the wind and embark on one
last mad love affair with a younger woman. Odile is just what he
needs to return some colour to his drab, meaningless life, but the
young woman is not keen to get involved with the older man.
Undeterred, Pierre persists and soon lures Odile into a wild
adventure. If you're going to go, you might as well go out with a
bang...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.