Weekly roundup

>> Summer brain candy and a low-key thriller

by MALCOLM FRASER

L’Homme de Sa Vie

In Zabou Breitman’s drama, middle-aged couple Frédéric (Bernard Campan) and Frédérique (Léa Drucker) are vacationing in the French countryside with a posse of family and friends. One night, they invite over their new next-door neighbour Hugo (Charles Berling), a gay designer with an acerbic wit and a penchant for late-night nude swimming. Berling strikes up an immediate rapport with Campan and various members of the family, and before long ingratiates himself into their lives.

Breitman teases out the subtext of the film by returning repeatedly to the first night of the characters’ meeting, when the entourage goes to bed one by one until Berling and Campan are left alone, drinking and talking until dawn. Berling, a cynic who’s never had a long-term relationship, needles Campan on his monogamous family values, insisting that he’s going against his true nature. Each return to this scene brings new revelations that add layers of significance to the two men’s relationship later in the film’s chronology.

This device keeps the minimal plot intriguing, the film is beautifully shot and full of memorable images, and the two leads convey their characters’ inner lives with compelling subtlety. A couple of subplots that turn up in the final third, about Berling’s relationship with his father and a sex scandal between two minor characters, aren’t fleshed out and end up feeling a bit superfluous. In general, though, the film is thoughtful, intelligent, poignant and easy on the eyes, the thinking viewer’s equivalent of summer eye and brain candy.

Sauf Le Respect Que Je Vous Dois

Fabienne Godet’s thriller starts out with a nighttime car chase, but we realize pretty quickly that this is no typical action flick. Olivier Gourmet, who some might remember from last year’s standout Quebec film Congorama, plays François, a middle-aged man whose demanding management job at a printing plant is interfering more and more with his home life, much to the consternation of his wife (Dominique Blanc) and young son.

François is also friends with Simon (Jean-Michel Portal), a younger man at the plant whose hair-trigger temper alienates him from his co-workers. When Portal commits suicide after getting fired, Gourmet tries to confront their hard-ass boss with disastrous results, leaving him on the run from the authorities.

Godet directs the film with a sober tone; the muted colours and largely natural lighting complement the restrained performances and the realistic feel of the pacing. It’s like she’s taken tried-and-true thriller archetypes—the wronged victim seeking out vigilante justice, the isolated man trying to stay one step ahead of the law—and depicted how they would actually play out for a man of average wits and cunning.

In fact, the film is so resolutely low-key and naturalistic that some viewers might find themselves pining for an action scene or some comic relief. But the cast is excellent, with the particularly compelling Gourmet but also featuring solid turns by Julie Depardieu and Marion Cotillard (La vie en rose), and all told it’s a solid thriller for those who like to stray from the clichéd.

Both films open this
Friday, Aug. 17

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