Americano (2011)
Directed by Mathieu Demy

Film Review

For someone whom Fate had chosen to be the offspring of not one but two immensely talented filmakers - Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda - Mathieu Demy has been perhaps understandably cautious about embarking on his own filmmaking career.  His first tentative efforts behind the camera - Le Plafond (2001) and La Boude (2005) - were shorts that went virtually unnoticed and for the past three decades he has devoted himself to a busy and very successful acting career.  It wasn't until 2011, on the threshold of his fifth decade, that Demy Junior finally became a film director proper with his first feature Americano, an elegant road movie in the classical American mould which is both a personal homage to the director's parents and a modest tribute to American cinema in general.  It's as good an excuse as any to cruise around California in a red Mustang '66...

Mathieu Demy is renowned for the sensitivity and realism he brings to his screen portrayals, portrayals which express the confusion, alienation and vulnerability of 21st century man more cogently than any number of great literary tomes.  His first feature as a director is imbued with the very same qualities and feels like an updated version of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), with Demy skilfully constructing a fractured portrait of a man desperately trying to find meaning in his existence, which he does by pursuing an elusive woman who comes from nowhere and seems to hold the key to the puzzle that is his life.  The object of Demy's obsession is a slightly over-the-hill Mexican nightclub hostess named Lola, just one of the many allusions to the work of the director's illustrious parents which abound in this film.  With Lola played with such mystique and sensual allure by Mexican actress Salma Hayek you can easily comprehend why Demy's character is so strongly drawn to her.  In a film noir, she would be the archetypal femme fatale, but in Demy's film she is also a convincingly drawn representation of 'the other' in American society - Mexican trash to be degraded, hounded and driven into a tawdry life of prostitution.  Hayek's Lola depicts the face of the so-called 'American dream' that no one wants to see.

Jacques Demy's 1961 film Lola is one obvious point of reference, but so too are two of his later, lesser known works: Model Shop (1969) and Parking (1985).  Model Shop was Demy Senior's first English-language film, filmed in California as a direct sequel to Lola.  Parking was a modern interpretation of the Orpheus legend and shows a descent into Hell that is similar to that depicted by Mathieu Demy in his film, although Demy's approach owes more to Quentin Tarantino than his less gorily minded father.  Interspersed throughout the narrative are flashbacks in which Demy's character recalls his childhood.  These are excerpts taken from Agnès Varda's 1981 film Documenteur in which eight-year-old Mathieu Demy appeared, at the time when his father was preparing a film in America that ultimately fell through. The same film provides part of the score for Americano, a theme originally composed by Georges Delerue.

Even though Mathieu Demy is visibly influenced by the directing styles and thematic interests of both of his parents, he does succeed in forging his own cinematic style and telling a story that is his own.  Americano does at times feel cluttered and uneven, with ugly clichés spoiling one or two scenes, but the film's good-natured retro charm somehow carries it through, allowing it to cross from one genre to another (road-movie one minute, post-modern erotic thriller the next) without the spectator being too conscious of the transition.  With the support of a commendable cast (Geraldine Chaplin, Chiara Mastroianni and Jean-Pierre Mocky all appear only briefly but each earns his paycheck) Demy crafts a beguiling and profoundly resonant study in one man's search for the meaning of life in a foreign land.  As far as filmmaking debuts go it's a pretty impressive start.  Mathieu Demy has come of age.

Film Synopsis

Martin is a late thirty-something who lives in Paris with his girlfriend Claire, although the spark has long gone out of their relationship and they live together more out of habit than through mutual need.  On hearing of his mother's death, Martin immediately heads off to California, to the little town where he grew up, to sort out all of the legal formalities.  On his arrival, he is met by Linda, an old friend of the family, who escorts him to the apartment where his mother used to live.  It is an area that Martin remembers well, having lived there as a child.  A nostalgia rush propels him to Tijuana, where he starts looking for Lola, a young Mexican woman who was apparently close to his mother.  Martin finally meets Lola at the Americano nightclub, where she works as a dancer.  It is time for Martin to confront his past if he is to make any sense of his present feelings...