Film Review
After the storm, the reflection... For her fourth feature,
actress-turned-director Maïwenn finds herself on well-trodden
territory as she serves up a familiar tale of an intense love affair
that ends in horrible disillusionment, no doubt drawing on her own
painful past experiences as she does so. Ingmar Bergman's
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
remains the definitive treatment of the subject against which others
are to be measured; next to this, Maïwenn's turgid, self-absorbed
and mostly vacuous attempt to cover the same ground looks pretty feeble
and it is only the presence of its two charismatic lead performers -
Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel - that prevents it from being a
totally futile exercise in directorial self-aggrandizement. It
would appear that the success of the director's previous film
Polisse
(2011) has gone to her head and she now sees herself as one of France's
leading film auteurs. Dommage.
Mon roi exhibits most of the
weaknesses of
Polisse whilst
lacking pretty well all of those qualities that helped to make it one
of the worthiest films of 2011, not least of which is an original
premise tackled in an innovative 'sur le vif' manner. Resorting
to the hackneyed device of recounting the breakdown of a relationship
via a series of flashbacks,
Mon roi
attempts to make up for its lack of narrative originality by resorting
to histrionic excess of the most egregious kind. The flat,
archetypal characters are inflated like blow-up dolls in a crude
attempt to make them 'come alive', through a combination of excessive
writing and even more excessive acting. Raw energy is no
substitute for real drama - the film offers plenty of the former, and
precious little of the latter.
Some obvious weaknesses in the script (a lack of structure, reliance on
clichéd situations, thinly developed characters...) are
painfully exacerbated by Maïwenn's habit of filming long,
improvisational takes, which can't help looking like a poor man's
imitation of Maurice Pialat. Amidst the dross and soap-style
hysteria,
Mon roi does
contain some impressive content, and with some drastic pruning, the
film could easily have been redeemed. Sadly, Maïwenn has yet
to appreciate the virtue of discarding superfluity, and so her film is
overlong, uneven, repetitive and peppered with scenes that reek of
tiresome amateurishness.
Thankfully, the performances go some way to rescuing the film, with a
particularly strong contribution from Emmanuelle Bercot, who was
rewarded with the Best Actress award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival
(which she shared with Rooney Mara for
Carol (2015)). A capable
director as well as an accomplished actress, Bercot has also received
praise this year for her film
La Tête haute
(2015). Cassel's casting as the seductive alpha male
par excellence is hardly a stroke
of genius (it is the kind of role in which the actor is visibly most at
ease) but his presence provides the gravitas that the film badly needs
to anchor it in something resembling reality. Playing Bercot's
wiser younger brother, Louis Garrel is surprisingly effective in an
uncharacteristically sympathetic role, and the director's sister Isild
Le Besco is well-utilised in a supporting role.
The abundance of acting talent doesn't however equate to quality
performances and some of the acting is downright dodgy. When the
main characters are not screaming at each other they appear strangely
distant, as if unsure where the next line is coming from. The
scenes set in the present timeframe - in the rehab centre where Bercot
amuses herself in the company of photogenic physically handicapped
young men - almost belong to another film, and these take up too much
(about a quarter) of
Mon roi's
runtime to justify their inclusion. It would be unfair to
describe Maïwenn's overwrought fourth feature as a total
write-off, but after the breath of fresh air that was
Polisse this ungainly rehash of an
all-too-familiar subject can hardly fail to disappoint.
© James Travers 2015
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