Film Review
It has been 35 years since Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert
played alongside one another in a feature film, that film being Maurice
Pialat's idiosyncratic romance
Loulou (1980). Now, Fate
(or, more likely, a film director with a strange sense of humour) has
picked them both up and placed them in the most unlikely of places, in
a two-handed drama that delights in blurring the edges being reality
and fiction but fails to add up to much beyond the obvious pleasure of
seeing two of France's greatest actors sparring off one another.
Director Guillaume Nicloux has a reputation as something of an
iconoclast, having radically altered the screen personas of Josiane
Balasko and Thierry Lhermitte in two earlier films (
Cette
femme-là and
Une
affaire privée), but in
Valley
of Love he doesn't so much subvert as prostrate himself before
two of cinema's most beloved icons.
It is no accident that the characters that Huppert and Depardieu
portray in this film share their first names. Neither is it
fortuitous that their characters are world famous film stars who have
put their career before their private lives. The central question
at the heart of the film - why do an estranged couple so willingly
agree to go on a tour of one of the most inhospitable places on Earth?
- echoes the more obvious question: why would two highly respected
actors agree to appear in such a low-key and singularly weird
film? For the characters in the film, the answers are readily
forthcoming: a shared need to bury their guilt and seek closure on
their son's death. For the actors who play them we can only
speculate: personal catharsis or just the need to take time out from
their busy schedules?
For Depardieu, the connection between the film and real life incident
is more apparent and poignant. It wasn't that long ago that his
own son Guillaume (coincidentally the same name as the director's) died
prematurely young just when his own acting career was taking off in a
big way. When Depardieu reads the letters from his fictional dead
son in the film, his voice audibly breaks and the inner pain is
expressed in every part of his tragi-comic face. From a distance,
both Depardieu and Huppert look like comicbook caricatures of their
real selves - the former a prematurely aged juvenile carrying far too
many kilos, the latter an over-the-hill diva trying pathetically to
look as if she is still twenty, as thin as a rake and as prickly as a
cactus soaked in vinegar. The stars don't quite send themselves
up, but there is more than a hint of intentional self-mockery.
This makes the film's more sober moments of reflection all the more
surprising and powerful, and what makes
Valley of Love worth watching is
the subtle rapport that develops between the two main characters, one
that possibly gives a glimpse into the actors' inner lives, showing the
wounds that have yet to heal and the regrets that still rankle.
Valley of Love is a film that,
without its charismatic leads, would add up to precisely
nothing. Nicloux's idea presumably was to take two stars, put
them in a desert, and see what develops. As a concept, it's
pretty empty, and so is the film that results - a quasi-mystical,
pseudo-religious road movie that ambles along pleasantly but doesn't
really go anywhere. One strangely surreal incident offers a
fleeting taste of where Nicloux may have taken the film had he been a
little more adventurous, but this proves to be a false dawn and the
film continues down its prosaic, non-commital path to a totally
unsatisfying destination. With not much inspiration in evidence
either in the writing or direction, it is left to the stunning location
and attention-hogging lead actors to rescue this ill-conceived
enterprise. Depardieu, Huppert and the savage beauty of one of
America's greatest national parks make
Valley of Love a quaint and mildly
absorbing film, but it's unlikely that it will change your life.
© James Travers 2015
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Next Guillaume Nicloux film:
Cette femme-là (2003)
Film Synopsis
Isabelle and Gérard, two well-known film actors, keep a strange
kind of rendezvous in Death Valley, California. They haven't seen
each other for years and it is at the invitation of their son Michel, a
photographer who committed suicide six months ago, that they are here,
alone together in this awesome landscape. Despite the apparent
absurdity of the situation and the sweltering heat, Isabelle and
Gérard decide to follow through the strange programme that their
son has organised for them, unsure what his motives were for bringing
them together in one of the most desolate places on Earth...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.