Valentin Valentin (2015)
Directed by Pascal Thomas

Film Review

With Valentin Valentin director Pascal Thomas prolongs a series of whodunits which so far includes four respectable, if slightly off-the-wall, adaptations of Agatha Christie novels, the most recent being Associés contre le crime (2012).  This time, the source novel is Ruth Rendell's Tigerlilly's Orchids, and Thomas's approach is far less playful than before.  In fact, the film is relentlessly downbeat, a humourless portrait of suburban life in which the main character is polished off before the halfway stage and you are left wondering what the point of the film is as the plot drifts aimlessly for the next fifty or so minutes.  It's a film that takes mundanity to unbearable extremes and makes you wonder whether Thomas's previous cinematic exploits have totally drained his creativity.

Thomas describes the film as a study in various shades of female desire, although this bears scant resemblance to the film he actually ended up delivering, which works neither as a traditional murder mystery nor as a particularly astute slice of life drama.  Part of the problem is that all of the characters (without exception) are poorly developed archetypes (some being outright grotesques, notably a nymphomaniac Gillain and perpetually sozzled Geraldine Chaplin) who soon become irritating beyond belief.  Part of the problem is that Thomas seems to have no real interest in the murder mystery strand and pretty well overlooks this to the point that the spectator almost forgets it.  But the main killer is Thomas's flat-as-a-pancake direction which renders practically every scene painfully dull and just about throttles the life out of the film even before it has got underway.

Worse, Thomas makes some bizarre choices which render the film even harder to stomach.  The title character Valentin is apparently one that women find totally irresistible and end up composing admiring songs about.  You'd imagine someone in the Gaspard Ulliel or Jean Dujardin line, not Vincent Rottiers made up to resemble a mumbling computer geek.  To strain credulity even further, we have busty blonde Arielle Dombasle playing Rottiers' crazy mum.  Marie Gillain obviously has a thing about geeks in glasses, because she looks set to explode every time she comes near Rottiers, and Marilou Berry is cast, predictably, as Little Miss Dowdy.  For a director who, for most of his career, had a knack of turning out well-judged crowdpleasers, Valentin Valentin represents a sorry descent into artless mediocrity, and if the occasional excursions into tacky erotica don't put you off, it's haphazard plotting and life-sapping vacuity certainly will.

Film Synopsis

In a small apartment block in Paris, a melancholic 30-year-old named Valentin divides his time between his demanding mistress, his egoistical mother, three girls on the fifth floor and a pretty Chinese girl whose presence in the house across the road has always intrigued him.  One day, Valentin invites all of his neighbours to a housewarming party, little knowing that he is about to unleash a spiral of violence which will end with his murder.  Who could possibly want to do away with someone as popular as Valentin?