Les Fantômes d'Ismaël (2017)
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin

Film Review

In common with many reputable artists before him, Arnaud Desplechin has reached the point in his career where he feels the need to take stock, review his past work and reflect on his capabilities as a filmmaker.  Les Fantômes d'Ismaël is the most honest and revealing of self-portraits, with Mathieu Amalric, Desplechin's loyal collaborator on six earlier films, once again playing the writer-director's alter ego, this time as an ageing filmmaker forced to re-evaluate his life when his past and present suffer a violent head-on collision.  This is an odd, genre-hopping potpourri of a film that gives its author ample opportunity to trawl through his eclectic back catalogue and revisit themes dear to him, snatching literary and cinema allusions where he can and pulling out of this abundant chaos a picture of himself and his relationship to his art that is as cruel as it is fascinating.

Desplechin's tendency for contemplating his own well-formed navel has been noticed in previous films.  From Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle) (1996) to Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse (2015), his own personal experiences have always served as the basis of his art, with Amalric playing pretty much the role that Jean-Pierre Léaud served in François Truffaut's films, showing the filmmaker as he imagines himself to be.  Les Fantômes d'Ismaël is the culmination of this process of morbid self-analysis in which Desplechin examines himself through the fractured prism of a menopausal mind haunted by self-doubt and a sudden re-awakening of the artistic possibilities of cinematic expression.

With its multiple inter-locking story strands, its merging of past and present, reality and fiction, Les Fantômes d'Ismaël is hardly the most lucid piece of cinema and at times it is all too easy to lose your way in this sprawling maze of the imagination that Desplechin constructs for himself, like Proust on a carefree acid trip.  The spy thriller intrigue that opens the film (an overt reference to the director's first feature, La Sentinelle) turns out to be the reddest of red herrings, although the presence of a shady character named Dédalus, the Joycean name allotted to the director's alter ego in earlier films, provides a Narnia-like doorway into what follows.

Here, Desplechin's ever-dependable stand-in Amalric is preoccupied with making a film about the espionage exploits of his brother when life - or rather death - catches up with him, with the unexpected return from 'the other side' (the Land of the Dead rather than Hollywood) of his former lover.  The fact that the deceased lover in question is named Carlotta will immediately send cinephiles into a frenzy of delight, as this was the name Hitchcock chose for the tragically fated woman that kicked off the events in his greatest film, Vertigo (1958).  This is the most blatant of a veritable slew of cinematic references that Desplechin takes an almost manic glee in garnishing his film with.

The return of Carlotta, in the form of an utterly beguiling Marion Cotillard, is the last thing Amalric needs now that he has settled into a harmonious relationship with his present sweetheart, a delectable Charlotte Gainsbourg.  As Cotillard takes up cudgels against French bureaucracy and tries to claim back her past lover, Amalric's past and present come crashing together like a pair of premenstrual tectonic plates and, not surprisingly, his reason goes into a dramatic tailspin, to the point that he can no longer decide what is real and what is imaginary.  Not content with homaging the illustrious Hitchcock, with far less subtlety than you might suppose, Desplechin goes chasing after the ghosts of other cinematic giants, from Bergman to Truffaut, in his all-out attempt to trounce the delirium of confusion that is Fellini's 8½, the art film's gold standard for unbridled nombrilistic excess.

With its joyfully (or should that be Joyce-fully?) frenetic narrative and over-reliance on film references (ninety-five per cent of which will go straight over the heads of most spectators) Les Fantômes d'Ismaël presents considerable challenges for the average moviegoer and committed art house devotee alike, but for those who are reasonably au fait with Desplechin's past work, it is a ditsy cinematic scrapbook that is hard to resist.  Amalric's beguiling presence is enough to hold together this kaleidoscopic montage and give it the coherence it needs to avoid ending up (like Fellini's film) as the messiest of ego trips ultimately going nowhere in particular.  

With made-to-measure roles for Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg (the elfin etherealness of the latter making the most vivid contrast with the sultry sensuality of the former), and plenty of amusing interludes featuring equally capable actors in smaller roles (Louis Garrel and Hippolyte Girardet to name just two), the film has few let-downs on the casting front and positively sizzles with talent.  Irina Lubtchansky's photography has its own unique beauty and adds to the baroque weirdness of the piece, achieving a brittle coherence that Desplechin appears so determined to decimate with his narrative bifurcations and manic switching between alternate realities.  For anyone who has ever fantasised about undertaking a Fantastic Voyage through the mind of one of France's most dedicated auteur filmmakers today, Les Fantômes d'Ismaël is a heaven-sent opportunity to do just that, and frankly it is one of the weirdest excursions you will ever undertake.

Film Synopsis

Ismaël Vuillard is a fifty-something filmmaker who is struggling to complete a film inspired by the real-life spy exploits of his brother, Ivan Dédalus.  To this day, he carries the scars of a tragic romance - it was twenty-one years ago that his one true love, Carlotta, suddenly went out of his life, never to be seen again.  Convinced of Carlotta's death, Ismaël has attempted to rebuild his life by focussing on his career and marrying another woman, Sylvia.  Now he and his wife lead an idyllic life together in a house by the sea, although Carlotta remains in his thoughts as a result of frequent contact with her father, Henri Bloom, a Jew who is still tormented by his memories of the Holocaust.  One day, quite unexpectedly, Sylvia is met by a woman claiming to be Carlotta.  Confident that his wife has been deceived, Ismaël refuses to accept that his former lover has returned to him from beyond the grave.  As his state of mind deteriorates, the filmmaker gives up his work and seeks the sanctuary of the house in Roubaix where he grew up.  Here, alone and cut off from the outside world, he at once falls prey to the ghosts of his past...