Au fil d'Ariane (2014)
Directed by Robert Guédiguian

Film Review

There's an unmistakable 'demob happy' feel to Robert Guédiguian's latest idiosyncratic slice of Marseillaise life, a sense that, after a series of intense, meaningful dramas the time has come to let one's hair down and have a bit of fun.  Either that or the director has been knocking back the pastis too enthusiastically of late.  The social and political concerns that impinged so heavily on Guédiguian's previous films are virtually absent from the exuberant flight of fancy that is Au fil d'Ariane, the French film that is bound to end up being referred to as 'the one with the talking turtle'.  A surreal odyssey of a movie, drenched in cinematic and literary allusions, it's a kind of trippy Mediterranean Alice in Wonderland in which Guédiguian's faithful muse and real-life wife Ariane Ascaride has to negotiate a labyrinth of the imagination that makes Theseus's trip to the Minotaur look like an uneventful day out to Disneyland Paris.

From their first collaboration on Dernier été (1981), director Robert Guédiguian and actress Ariane Ascaride have enjoyed one of the longest and most fruitful of professional partnerships.  No wonder then that, for their 18th film together, Guédiguian should offer up a personal tribute to the woman who has been the mainstay of his career.  If Au fil d'Ariane is anything it is an affectionate love poem dedicated to Ariane Ascaride, the enchantress that most of Guédiguian's admirers first discovered in his breakthrough feature Marius et Jeannette (1997).  With so many noteworthy films already in the bag, all eloquent and beautifully rendered explorations of the human condition, we can forgive the director this one mad self-indulgent romp, particularly as it is such an honest expression of gratitude for the woman who has given him so much.

The film may be Ariane Ascaride's but Guédiguian hasn't forgotten the other members of his loyal troupe - Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan and Jacques Boudet - all as much a fabric of the director's cinema as the sunny Marseille setting.  Anaïs Demoustier and Adrien Jolivet are a welcome addition to the company, along with the real star of the film, the aforementioned verbose amphibian.  For once, Guédiguian jettisons realistic characterisation and instead goes for outright caricature, a treat that his cast obviously seem to appreciate.  There's no shortage of earnest self-parody here.

The one thing that is conspicuous by its absence is Guédiguian's left-leaning preoccupation with social issues, although there is one obvious point of connection with his previous Marseille-based films - a manifest sense of dismay with the transformations that have been visited on the city in the course of the director's life time.  There's virtually nothing to connect the 1930s Marseille beloved by Marcel Pagnol with the soulless urban vistas that Guédiguian presents in his films, with monstrous erections of concrete and steel standing like hideous shrines to the glory of capitalism over human individuality.  There's a vague Proustian resonance to much of Guédiguian's work but in Au fil d'Ariane it is particularly noticeable - a desire not so much to stem the flow of time as to hold on to the past, to cling onto those cherished fragments of past memories as they melt away to dust in your fingers.  The Marseille that Guédiguian knew in his childhood has been practically erased, and we can but join him in his silent lament.

Au fil d'Ariane is unlikely to rate as one of Guédiguian's most cherished films but it has a unique warmth and lyricism that set it apart in the director's oeuvre.  Admittedly, it is overlong, rambling and overstuffed with gratuitous superfluity, but, beautifully photographed, it is as much a treat for the eyes as any of Guédiguian's more sober and contemplative films.  And there is more to this film than immediately meets the eye.  Despite the full-frontal humour you can just detect the note of melancholy beneath the surface.  Au fil d'Ariane is, on the face of it, a boisterous hymn to the creative process and that most essential of human needs, for the freedom that will allow us to attain personal fulfilment, and yet it leaves you wondering whether such freedom is illusory or even desirable.  After the political disillusionment of Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro (2011) Robert Guédiguian again appears to mourn the futility of building a life on dreams.  The place for sandcastles in on the beach, not in the sky - assuming, that is, the beach hasn't been ripped up and converted into a busy container port.

Film Synopsis

It is Ariane's birthday but she is lonelier than she has ever been, all by herself in her pretty house.   The candles on her cake have been lit.  But the guests haven't showed up.  Acting on impulse, she gets into her car and leaves the suburbs, hoping to lose herself in the big city...