I am an enormous fan of Olivier Assayas’s films, which is why I’m willing to entertain the fact that I must have missed something to this. After all, outwardly it feels like any number of middlebrow films about families exposing the fractures in their interrelationships as they squabble over an estate. Actually, “squabble” is rather too active a verb for what plays out as a series of gentle disappointments and misunderstandings, and indeed perhaps it’s the subtlety which elevates it, for this is a film about people coming to terms with what they had hoped for their futures and what actually transpires. There’s also a strong theme in there about our subjective responses to art and the value it has in daily life, along with some fairly pointed remarks about how lifeless items look when placed in a museum context, which is both expected and also bold given this is part financed by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Still, at the heart is that familiar family drama of a bunch of privileged kids coming together at the fancy estate of their recently deceased mother to talk about what to do; Binoche has top-billing but it’s Charles Berling who holds things together as the linchpin of the family (and the only one living in and committed to France). I suspect I’ll find more to like with this film as I allow it to sit with me, but for now it feels underpowered.
CREDITS
Director/Writer Olivier Assayas; Cinematographer Eric Gautier; Starring Charles Berling; Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier, Édith Scob; Length 99 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Sunday 20 February 2022.
filmcentric 