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Errance
2003 Drama
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Summary
When his girlfriend Lou bears him a son, Jacques promises to give up his wayward existence
of debauchery and petty crime to start a new life. They move to the South of France,
where Jacques finds work as an estate agent whilst Lou takes care of their son.
The idyll lasts only a short time, however. Within a few years, Jacques has returned
to his old ways…
Critique
Damien Odoul’s second full-length film after his notable début work,
Le Souffle (2001) is a major disappointment
and fails in just about every department. In common with a lot of young filmmakers
recently, Odoul appears to be far more preoccupied with cinematic style than in constructing
a credible, coherent narrative – to the point of alienating anyone who watches the film.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if Odoul gave us something radically new – some starkly
innovative artistic vision or daring use of technique, but he doesn’t. It all feels
horribly second-hand, and the lack of anything approaching a storyline makes the histrionic
performances and laboured directorial style almost unbearable. The whole film looks
like a rather half-hearted home video recording – ugly, uneven, badly constructed and
rather vacuous. Laetitia Casta’s performance is at least engaging, the only thing
that prevents the film from being totally unwatchable,
but her co-star, Benoît Magimel (otherwise a fine actor), constantly looks as if
he’d rather be somewhere else. The thing that really offends, however, is
the awful, gut-wrenchingly pretentious ending – which, intended to evoke pangs of sympathy,
merely provokes howls of derision.
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