Roman de Gare
Directed by Claude Lelouch
Before concluding Roman De Gare’s story of celebrated novelist Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant), a fixture on one of those classy French TV chat shows like Bouillion de Culture or Apostrophes, director Claude Lelouch swerves tangentially away from the murder accusation that tarnishes her reputation. As if making a movie of a florid Ralitzer potboiler, Lelouch focuses on a serial killer’s prison break and the story of a Parisian hairdresser, Huguette (Audrey Dana), who visits her country family and passes off a stranger as her fiancé. Simultaneously, Lelouch launches a tale about a writer, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon) scheming to win his own artistic reputation. These several narratives keep surging forward—briskly, like reading the type of airport novel that gives the movie its title.
I can’t say that I love all of Roman De Gare, but it is worth reporting that the first half of the film is nearly perfect—a master’s piece. Prodigal daughter Huguette returns to her humble origins full of misgivings about the fiancé who humiliates and jilts her. When not berating herself (“I’m too much, I wear guys out, I’m an airhead”), she invents tales of big-city success to appease her kin, including the teenage daughter she left behind. Huguette plays status games and sex games in her family-reunion mind games. As it turns out, the members of her family aren’t country bumpkins, just extraordinarily patient with her flightiness and insecurity. Audrey Dana has an in-your-face presence and intense brown eyes like Carmen Maura’s: sad, hurt, unsophisticated—but innocent and essentially honest. OK, she’s an Almodóvar character as conceived through French rational-humanism. Her only outré moment (after threatening an interloper, she triumphantly walks back into her family’s bosom—but carrying a shotgun) is psychologically apt. It caps a perfect, heartfelt “You can take a girl from the farm...” short story.
This is a great extended anecdote. It raises themes that will recur in Ralitzer’s trial story, but Lelouch plants details about biography, family, disappointment and desire that enrich Huguette’s own story. (Gilbert Becaud songs underscore each character’s romantic fantasies.) The scene of Huguette’s daughter and a mysterious man walking off into the woods as pig-slaughter sounds are heard on the soundtrack (possibly anticipating murder while plausibly defining the rural milieu) is rich and provocative. It’s almost as if the projectionist switched reels with a Chabrol film—including the family dining scenes that add fascinating background detail and suspense.
Has the extraordinarily facile Lelouch changed—or has he lost track of his story? It turns out that Roman De Gare is one of Lelouch’s most substantive caprices. He’s playing narrative games that also reflect varieties of human nature. (Becaud’s song “The Cherries are White” parallels a comment that in Ralitzer’s novels “Men are bearded women.”) It is the credible observation of human behavior that makes Lelouch’s movies enthralling. His storytelling is spoiler-proof.
As always, Lelouch’s real subject is fate, but he never lets you see where he’s going or how fate will reveal itself. The journey, full of whimsical curves and human insights, is the delight. Lelouch can mock his own reputation for the airport-novel style because he commands an impressive sense of flair plus worldliness. Although Lelouch is no Sacha Guitry–style satirist, he has a solidly middlebrow sense of humor, seeking profound verities in different kinds of heartache and foible. Though this eventually seems like sheer manipulation, every tangential shot or edit becomes an intriguing clue to Ralitzer’s personal mystery while adding tone to Huguette and Pierre’s own lives. His gamesmanship is aided by Ardant’s allure, always imposing and enigmatic. And Pinon—the imp from Diva and Jean-Pierre Jeunet movies—finally gets to play a sexually confident man (his own enigma described as “Part Chaplin, Part Michel Simon”).
Lelouch isn’t one of those coterie filmmakers like Hou Hsiao Hsien, Phillippe Garrel, Pedro Costa or Apichatpong Weerasethakul, but I’d rather see a Lelouch film before any of theirs. Like Chanel couture, he’s never without style. In Roman De Gare, his 40th feature, Lelouch wears his mastery casually as ever—the freewheeling camera, spontaneous atmosphere and charming characters remain cleverly entertaining.
Directed by Claude Lelouch
Before concluding Roman De Gare’s story of celebrated novelist Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant), a fixture on one of those classy French TV chat shows like Bouillion de Culture or Apostrophes, director Claude Lelouch swerves tangentially away from the murder accusation that tarnishes her reputation. As if making a movie of a florid Ralitzer potboiler, Lelouch focuses on a serial killer’s prison break and the story of a Parisian hairdresser, Huguette (Audrey Dana), who visits her country family and passes off a stranger as her fiancé. Simultaneously, Lelouch launches a tale about a writer, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon) scheming to win his own artistic reputation. These several narratives keep surging forward—briskly, like reading the type of airport novel that gives the movie its title.
I can’t say that I love all of Roman De Gare, but it is worth reporting that the first half of the film is nearly perfect—a master’s piece. Prodigal daughter Huguette returns to her humble origins full of misgivings about the fiancé who humiliates and jilts her. When not berating herself (“I’m too much, I wear guys out, I’m an airhead”), she invents tales of big-city success to appease her kin, including the teenage daughter she left behind. Huguette plays status games and sex games in her family-reunion mind games. As it turns out, the members of her family aren’t country bumpkins, just extraordinarily patient with her flightiness and insecurity. Audrey Dana has an in-your-face presence and intense brown eyes like Carmen Maura’s: sad, hurt, unsophisticated—but innocent and essentially honest. OK, she’s an Almodóvar character as conceived through French rational-humanism. Her only outré moment (after threatening an interloper, she triumphantly walks back into her family’s bosom—but carrying a shotgun) is psychologically apt. It caps a perfect, heartfelt “You can take a girl from the farm...” short story.
This is a great extended anecdote. It raises themes that will recur in Ralitzer’s trial story, but Lelouch plants details about biography, family, disappointment and desire that enrich Huguette’s own story. (Gilbert Becaud songs underscore each character’s romantic fantasies.) The scene of Huguette’s daughter and a mysterious man walking off into the woods as pig-slaughter sounds are heard on the soundtrack (possibly anticipating murder while plausibly defining the rural milieu) is rich and provocative. It’s almost as if the projectionist switched reels with a Chabrol film—including the family dining scenes that add fascinating background detail and suspense.
Has the extraordinarily facile Lelouch changed—or has he lost track of his story? It turns out that Roman De Gare is one of Lelouch’s most substantive caprices. He’s playing narrative games that also reflect varieties of human nature. (Becaud’s song “The Cherries are White” parallels a comment that in Ralitzer’s novels “Men are bearded women.”) It is the credible observation of human behavior that makes Lelouch’s movies enthralling. His storytelling is spoiler-proof.
As always, Lelouch’s real subject is fate, but he never lets you see where he’s going or how fate will reveal itself. The journey, full of whimsical curves and human insights, is the delight. Lelouch can mock his own reputation for the airport-novel style because he commands an impressive sense of flair plus worldliness. Although Lelouch is no Sacha Guitry–style satirist, he has a solidly middlebrow sense of humor, seeking profound verities in different kinds of heartache and foible. Though this eventually seems like sheer manipulation, every tangential shot or edit becomes an intriguing clue to Ralitzer’s personal mystery while adding tone to Huguette and Pierre’s own lives. His gamesmanship is aided by Ardant’s allure, always imposing and enigmatic. And Pinon—the imp from Diva and Jean-Pierre Jeunet movies—finally gets to play a sexually confident man (his own enigma described as “Part Chaplin, Part Michel Simon”).
Lelouch isn’t one of those coterie filmmakers like Hou Hsiao Hsien, Phillippe Garrel, Pedro Costa or Apichatpong Weerasethakul, but I’d rather see a Lelouch film before any of theirs. Like Chanel couture, he’s never without style. In Roman De Gare, his 40th feature, Lelouch wears his mastery casually as ever—the freewheeling camera, spontaneous atmosphere and charming characters remain cleverly entertaining.
