Directed by Francois Ozon
Through Dec. 29 at IFC Center
Runtime: 90 min.
Ricky is spoiler-spoof, a movie so
full of surprises that its constant turns are key its enjoyment and eventual,
buoyant revelations. This story of a miraculous child born to a French single
mother Katie (Alexandra Lamy) who takes up with Spanish immigrant worker Paco
(Sergi López), shows director Francois Ozon—who started out as a badboy cynic—teasing
expectations about his own preoccupations with mysterious human psychology,
complex relationships and capricious fate. Ricky demonstrates his
artistic growth while also being shockingly original.
In Ozon’s distinctively eccentric style, Ricky
applies modern skepticism to the prospect of parthenogenesis (based on an
American short story by Rose Tremain), then deepens the concept. Ricky’s trajectory amounts to a compendium
of Ozon traits that simultaneously evoke his filmography: It moves through
sinister character sketch (like Under the Sand), harsh observations of
worldliness (Water Drops on Burning Rocks), enchanted observation (Criminal Lovers), genre deconstruction (8 Women), social allegory (Sitcom)
and emotional scrutiny (5X2, Time to Leave). Ozon’s career has taken
fantastic shape.
A sense of assured contemplation gives the film
coherence and poetic consistency as when Katie’s daughter Lisa (Mellusine
Mayance), a remarkably pale yet luminous, almost otherworldly child, forecasts
and reflects the lonely singularity of her new sibling. Lisa’s like Pearl in The
Scarlet Letter, a child born of her parents’ social and moral tension while
tiny Ricky suggests a strange new breed of possibility.
Being the product of Katie and Paco’s union—Lamy
and Lopez continue Ozun’s intensely erotic casting—Ricky is the ultimate love
child. He rouses a combination of desire and mistrust; transporting the family
through the unexpected (even touching on today’s desperate thrill/money hunger
for celebrity). Unlike the trite horror-movie gimmicks of the bad-seed indie
film Joshua, Ozun’s mastery stirs more complicated possibilities than
fright.
Ricky’s ultimate surprise comes from
Ozun making a family movie that tempers the saccharine with the perverse and
vice-versa. Despite his cynical debut, Ozun has not succumbed to fashionable
nihilism. His recognition of the other as social outcast, sexual rebel,
romantic martyr and possible saint is so unorthodox that his previous best
film, Time to Leave, partly about a gay man’s desire to procreate,
received a maniacal dismissal from the Village Voice. Ozun has left P.C.
hipsterism behind and made a more boldly original meditation on mankind than
even Fantastic Mr. Fox which amusingly tracked the animal within us; Ricky
finds the angelic possibility within our animal natures.
