Philippe Garrel 2013 France
Starring: Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Rebecca Convenant, Olga Milshtein, Esther Garrel, Manon Kneusé
The multi-talented French director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer Philippe Garrel has been working for some fifty years now and despite considerable critical acclaim very few of his films have found distribution in my home country, England. It's such that I've got to admit that even as an avid cinephile I've never managed to see any of his back catalogue. His latest and first in almost a decade to land on English shores, La Jalousie, begins with an almost Bergmanesque scene, startling in its simplicity featuring as it does nothing more than a single face, silent and obviously in some distress. The actress doesn't speak and there's no background noise and yet it's one of most effective opening images I've seen this year. What follows appears to introduce us to the woman, Clothilde, her partner (although he's in the process of leaving her), Louis, and their child, Charlotte. Not much is said but there's a distance between the couple, a resentment just below the surface, and when he leaves suddenly he neglects to kiss her goodbye, his affection transferred to another and exchanged for awkwardness. It's a confident start so it's a further surprise when it turns out that Clothilde and Charlotte are merely supporting players in Louis' story and his new girlfriend, fellow struggling actor Claudia, is introduced with their shifting relationship becoming the main focus. Garrel works with innovation shooting completely in black-and-white, through keyholes and in shadows, his characters forever on the peripheries, at times it even feels as if they're intruding or spying on the conversations and lives of others. He shows us several wonderfully warm moments then contrasts them with a striking, even severe, cynicism towards fidelity that borders on contempt. Yet the film never feels mismatched although it could easily be renamed Monogamy Is For The Rich. Playing Louis is Garrel's son, also called Louis and in recent years his go-to leading man. I've been pretty scornful of him in the past, feeling that for the most part (Bertolucci's The Dreamers aside) he didn't have much to offer and was mainly the recipient of excessive nepotism, but he puts in a decent performance here, showing a subtlety and maturity sadly lacking in his past work. As Louis' two main partners Rebecca Convenant and Anna Mouglalis are better however and, as Louis and Clothilde's young daughter, Olga Milshtein (in only her second role) is a precocious delight, constantly questioning, teasing and interrogating, controlling the conversation and standing as protector between her father and Claudia until she has accepted her as his new girlfriend. There is a slightly uncomfortable undercurrent though in that there's a real question how much the fictional Louis is based on the real-life Louis. In the past he's been wholly open about the fact that he struggles to inhabit his characters and here he not only retains his own name but also plays an actor and speaks of his father, a great artist, who he dearly misses and who, as Charlotte puts it, he loves the most. This could just be basic coincidence until Garrel Jr's younger sister Esther turns up, as Esther naturally, and also speaks of their absent parent, admitting how little she remembers of him. I may be mistaken but it's difficult not to read a personal (and not particularly complimentary on any front) narrative in the plot. Unfortunately the film only runs a slim seventy-two minutes and, as a result, its story feels slightly incomplete. It's not bad by any means but you're sort of left with the feeling that more could be drawn from the story and a deeper investigation wouldn't harm things. Honestly it's just nice for a Garrel Sr film to be available for all (at least in this country) to see so, even if the finished product could be improved, I'm glad of even a short one.
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