Avant l'hiver (2013)
Directed by Philippe Claudel

Film Review

After a weird excursion into Italian comedy with Tous les soleils (2011), director Philippe Claudel is on safer ground with his third feature, an elegant mélange of psychological thriller and intimate drama that boasts some stunning performances and a twisted foray into that most mysterious of phenomena, the male menopause.  Avant l'hiver (a.k.a. Before the Winter Chill) has the character depth and literary sophistication of Claudel's first feature, Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (2008), but it is a much darker work, its familiar plot ideas refreshed with an unsettling garnish of melancholia and quiet expectancy.  The storyline is unlikely to win any awards for originality but this scarcely matters.  What sells the film and makes it so compelling is Claudel's evident fascination with the more mysterious facets of human nature.  With the skill and precision of the neurosurgeon who is the main character in the drama Claudel cuts deep into the human psyche and reveals something about ourselves that we perhaps would rather not see.

The finesse of Claudel's writing and direction is well-served by a cast of excellent pedigree, headed by Daniel Auteuil, dazzling in one of his most challenging roles to date.  Overweight and looking every bit the grouchy old man, Auteuil has finally rid himself of the sympathetic loser image that has stuck to him throughout most of his career since his star-making role as Ugolin in Jean de Florette (1986).  It's hard to sympathise with Auteuil's portrayal of a sixty-something surgeon succumbing to a belated mid-life crisis.  There is something slightly nauseous about his character's pursuit of a much younger woman, and yet, as the misleading first impressions melt away, we begin to see things from his perspective and a far more complex, troubled character emerges, one that Auteuil is more than equipped to portray with heartrending sincerity.   

Kristin Scott Thomas has a far less central role than she did on Claudel's first feature but her presence is just as keenly felt, with a performance that is every bit as nuanced and beguiling.  Beneath the marble façade which Thomas's character puts up for the sake of bourgeois respectability there is a fragility which gently ripples through the actress's performance early in the film before being laid bare with shocking realism later on.  As the 'other woman' Leïla Bekhti is somewhat overshadowed by the acting giants standing beside her but she comes into her own in the second half of the film, and hers proves to be the most fascinating and unpredictable character on offer.  Likewise Richard Berry takes us by surprise with a solid character performance that rates as one of his finest to date.  Like a good wine, Berry evidently improves with age.

With a stiflingly glacial elegance that evokes both the bourgeois-baiting thrillers of Claude Chabrol and ironic middleclass dramas of Claude Sautet, Avant l'hiver is an unusually stylised film with a hard-to-define allure.  Whilst it may not be as polished and easy to engage with as Claudel's first film, it is more imaginatively directed and has substantially more depth to it.  Claudel is not afraid to let some questions go unanswered and so there is a teasing ambiguity to all of his protagonists, which adds to their mystique and realism.  A mature, intelligent drama, this is a film that demands some patience as its first half does drag a little in places, but if you stay with it the effort is amply rewarded in the end, with a cruel but handsomely constructed payoff.

Film Synopsis

Paul is a successful brain surgeon who, since he married Lucie, has never known a day's unhappiness.  He has a comfortable home, a loving family and a job he adores.  Everything has turned out for him as well as he could possibly have hoped.  But then, one day, something happens to shake his certainties.  He begins receiving flowers from an anonymous sender.  Not long afterwards, he discovers that he has a secret admirer in an attractive young woman named Lou.  She tells him that she is forever in his debt after he performed a life-saving operation on her some years ago.  Even though he is sixty and she is barely twenty, Paul finds himself strongly attracted to this mysterious woman and he begins to wonder whether his marriage to Lucie was purely one of mutual convenience...