Floride (2015)
Directed by Philippe Le Guay

Film Review

Floride marks the welcome return of Jean Rochefort to French cinema in his first leading role in a French film in almost a decade, and one that is more than worthy of his talents.  For the past ten years, Rochefort has had to content himself with voiceover work or roles in lesser films that are perhaps best forgotten, most recently Astérix & Obélix: Au service de sa Majesté (2012).  In Philippe Le Guay's Floride, he is back on form in what is probably his most challenging role to date, that of a strong-willed octogenarian gradually succumbing to the effects of dementia.  The film is adapted from Florian Zeller's 2012 stage play Le Père, which had Robert Hirsch playing the lead in a multiple-award-winning production.

The films of Philippe Le Guay form an eclectic mix which includes the hard-hitting social drama Trois huit (2001), quirky social comedy Les Femmes du 6ème étage (2011) and witty culture-clash comedy Alceste à bicyclette (2013).  Floride does nothing to alter this fact and is as boldly idiosyncratic as Le Guay's previous films, one that attempts the seemingly impossible feat of trying to make light of the condition we most dread, a degenerative brain disorder.  It would have been so much easier to follow the example of Michael Haneke's Amour (2012) and show the wasting effect of old age as something truly grim and devastating.  Le Guay's film tries to get us to see the funnier side, paying more than lip service to Chaplin's observation that "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."

The immense hurdle that Le Guay has to overcome is that our perception and fears about dementia are such that it is hard to accept it as a suitable subject for humour.  There are scenes in Floride which, whilst well-intentioned, are more likely to turn your stomach than provoke laughter.  Yet, mildly provocative though the film is, it deserves credit for tackling a difficult theme in such an innovative and good humoured way - if it helps to make dementia and the wider issue of growing old less of a taboo subject then it will have more than done its job.

And Le Guay doesn't just go for easy laughs.  The film starts in a broad comic vein, with Jean Rochefort clearly losing his marbles as an old man behaving disgracefully, a naughty child one minute, a cantankerous monster the next.  But by the end of the film, the tone is completely different - the camera has moved in and now the comedy has turned to something more likely to stir the emotions.  As Le Guay draws us nearer to the central protagonist and those who have to find a way to deal with his condition we acquire a greater awareness of what dementia really is - a slow and irreversible erasure of one's identity, as harrowing for the sufferer as it is for those who have to support him or her during the possibly long years of decline.  Le Guay's approach, however, is more life-affirming than depressing.

Lherminier's eccentric episodes (which exploit Rochefort's dramatic and comedic range to the full) show how a dispassionate outsider would look on an Alzheimer's sufferer.  It's just a strange old man doing what strange old men do when the inhibitions follow the marbles down the drain.  It is only when we begin to see how Lherminier is affected by his condition that the film's emotional force begins to assert itself, in subtle but effective ways.  Flashbacks and flights of fancy intrude on the narrative and show the main character gradually slipping into an alternative reality where time has no meaning - past, present and future merge into a single muddled state of being.  The 'Florida' of the film's title isn't a geographical destination, it is a mental one - like the mysterious Rosebud in Citizen Kane, it is a key that unlocks a door to a past to which the main character wants desperately to return.  As Lherminier sinks deeper into this timeless 'living death', his daughter Carole (played with the charm and conviction we have come to expect of Sandrine Kiberlain) is left feeling helpless, and it is she who steals our sympathies in the film's more downbeat second half.

Floride could have worked effectively if Le Guay had taken the easy option of sticking to the source text and making it a filmed piece of theatre.  Instead, he opens it out and projects it onto a broader canvas which makes effective use of its pretty location in the picturesque French town of Annecy.  The central characters are given greater depth by placing them in a vivid real setting - the sorry state of Lherminier's present condition is underscored by the fact he was the man who created a thriving paper-making business, and his daughter Carole's concerns are emphasised by the strains these place on her relationships with her grown-up son and partner (the latter played by Laurent Lucas in an unusually sympathetic role).  Anamaria Marinca equally has a solid presence as a no-nonsense carer who knows how to put Lherminier in his place.

Tackling a notoriously difficult subject in such an off-the-wall manner, Floride is a film that is unlikely to please everyone.  The over-generous runtime is a sign that Le Guay may have perhaps overstretched himself and, beset with a patchy and uneven narrative, the film certainly doesn't quite achieve the cohesion of some of the director's previous work.  However, whilst the journey is not as smooth as you may wish, the film leaves you feeling that it has dealt honestly and sensitively with its subject matter.  The suspicion that this might well prove to be Jean Rochefort's swansong - the crowning achievement of a truly remarkable career - lends the film an additional poignancy, although it could equally be the beginning of a massive comeback...

Film Synopsis

Claude Lherminier may be eighty years old but he is still a force to be reckoned with.  Lately, however, the retired industrialist has become increasingly forgetful and confused, his behaviour marked by alternately childish and aggressive interludes. His eldest daughter Carole already has her hands full running Claude's paper-mill and she struggles to save her father from himself as his health deteriorates further.  As her partner keeps telling her, the sensible thing would be to have Claude placed in a facility that is especially equipped to deal with his needs, but Carole cannot bring herself to take this step.  Meanwhile, Claude goes from bad to worse, and one day he makes up his mind to fly off to Florida...