Au plus près du soleil (2015)
Directed by Yves Angelo

Film Review

It's been a decade since Yves Angelo directed a film for the cinema, dividing the critics with his overwrought but intensely humane period drama Les Âmes grises (2005).  In the interim he has been busy doing what he does best, ennobling the films of other directors with his consummate skill as a cinematographer.  For his sixth film as a director, Angelo tackles a subject that would seem to be unworthy of his talents - a contemporary drama mistakenly constructed as a far-fetched psychological thriller.  With a script co-authored by François Dupeyron and a cast headed by Sylvie Testud, it's hard to see how Au plus près du soleil could go wrong, but Angelo, his inspiration visibly lacking, finds a way.

The main hurdle that Angelo has to overcome is the implausible storyline that he is presented with.  The plot is riddled with contrivances, which get more noticeable and harder to swallow as the film progresses.  There's a fundamental lack of logic in the way that all three of the main protagonists behave and they end up looking like automata on a baroque piece of furniture mechanically playing out a poignant but somewhat absurd form of Greek tragedy.  Even if we accept the unlikely premise that Sylvie Testud can find out the true mother of her adopted son in the way the film would have it, it strains credulity too far that she should, as a respectable magistrate, behave in the way she does, failing to discharge her professional duties with blithe disregard for the legal process.  It takes an even greater suspension of disbelief to accept what then happens, the first in a series of improbable developments that bring the three main characters together and sets them on a course to what looks like mutually assured destruction.

Not even Ingmar Bergman could have made much of such a ludicrous storyline, and even with three gifted lead actors at his disposal Yves Angelo looks as if he is fighting a losing battle all the way.  Of course, given Angelo's keenly developed visual sense, the film looks good, but this doesn't disguise the lack of substance beneath the surface gloss.  Sylvie Testud is visibly wasted in a part that requires her to do little but behave like a crabbily over-protective mother, and whilst Grégory Gadebois may look convincing in lawyer's robes, he seems a tad miscast as the husband who appears so willing to wreck his seemingly idyllic family.

Only Mathilde Bisson, stunningly sensual in her first major screen role (with a touch of the wild tigress about her), fits the character she has been allotted, and more than anything it is her alluring presence that holds our attention, enchanting us even when the film hobbles onto distastefully Oedipean territory.  Even with Bisson on board, and despite one or two strong scenes which give a glimpse of how much better the film might have worked as a more naturalistic drama, Au plus près du soleil never quite bridges the credibility gap and it leaves you feeling short-changed - albeit pleased to have encountered a possible future star in the form of Mlle Bisson.

Film Synopsis

Sophie is a judge who is presently occupied with the case of Juliette, a younger woman who is charged with abusing her lover, a man who was driven to suicide.  As she looks into the matter, Sophie makes the shocking discovery that Juliette is the biological mother of the boy she adopted some years ago.  Sophie has come to regard Léo as her own son and, fearing that Juliette may take her away from him, she arranges for her to be convicted for her alleged crime.  Sophie's husband Olivier, also a lawyer, finds his wife's behaviour incomprehensible and pays Juliette a visit after her release from prison, keeping from her his real identity.  Without Sophie knowing, Olivier is soon pursuing an affair with Juliette, never suspecting that the young woman may have a motive for breaking up his family...