Boomerang (2015)
Directed by François Favrat

Film Review

François Favrat's third feature brings a touch of the Claude Chabrols to his moodily atmospheric adaptation of Tatiana De Rosnay's best-selling novel Boomerang, the result being a reasonably effective fusion of family drama and thriller that makes up for the disappointment of the director's previous half-baked thriller La Sainte Victoire (2009).  De Rosnay's novels are hot property at the moment, with one already successfully adapted for cinema as Elle s'appelait Sarah (2010) by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and three more big screen adaptations in the offing.  Favrat's film condenses its author's sprawling novel into an intense but fairly routine murder mystery which clearly owes something to Chabrol's dark studies in family intrigue, whilst slipping in the odd gratuitous allusion to Hitchcock's films here and there.

One hard-to-forgive mistake that Favrat and his co-screenwriter Emmanuel Courcol (co-author of four previous films by Philippe Lioret, notably Welcome (2009)) make is to underline each and every plot twist, not giving the spectator much of an opportunity to work things out for himself.  It's as if the film's authors cannot trust the audience to stay the course, and so we get a tonne of exposition weighing down most of the narrative with irrelevant and distracting detail.  The film's excessive use of flashback hardly helps matters and merely clutters things up to the point where self-editing with a DVD remote control becomes almost obligatory (an option which is, alas, not available to those watching the film in cinemas).  It's a credit to Favrat's skill as a director - first revealed in his debut feature Le Rôle de sa vie (2004), an astute commentary on the vacuous cult of celebrity - that he can take such an unwieldy script, overcomplicate it with unnecessary flashbacks, and still end up with a reasonably slick and compelling drama, although much of the credit for this is probably down to his talented cast headed by Mr Flavour-of-the-Month, Laurent Lafitte.

Lafitte has already demonstrated his flair for comedy in one of the year's French box office winners, Martin Bourboulon's Papa ou maman (2015), but here, in a more demanding dramatic role, he is completely transformed and delivers a far darker, far more intense performance than you might expect.  It's mostly Lafitte's gripping central performance that carries the film, which becomes as much a study in personal obsession as a family intrigue as his character becomes increasingly persuaded that there is more to his mother's death than meets the eye.  As Lafitte's more level-headed younger sister, Mélanie Laurent appears either wilfully deluded or a beacon of sanity against which her brother's growing irrationality is to be measured.  There is sufficient ambiguity (just) for us to believe that Lafitte is in the throes of a nervous breakdown and that the mystery he is hung up on is merely one that he has invented for himself.  When the truth is revealed in the final act it is hard not to be a tad disappointed - Favrat's layering of intrigue upon intrigue, with Lafitte's performance further muddying the waters, had led us to expect a slightly craftier resolution than the one the film ends up pulling out of the hat.

If the thriller intrigue doesn't quite come up to scratch, at least the film manages to deliver on the character front, thanks again to some strong performances.  Playing Lafitte's father is a fiercely ambiguous Wladimir Yordanoff, who, in common with many grown-up fathers, still treats his offspring as if they were troublesome infants.  Bulle Ogier brings her unique brand of feminine mystique to her portrayal of Lafitte's taciturn grandmother, whose reluctance to rake over old coals is both suspicious and suggestive of something very sinister.  Most interesting perhaps is the relationship that develops between Lafitte's character and a woman he hardly knows but in whom he places considerable trust, his fellow investigator played by an enigmatic Audrey Dana - is it possible she has an ulterior motive in helping Antoine?

Boomerang is a competently realised thriller-drama hybrid that is sustained by its full-blooded performances and some stylish production design, although its heavy-handed script prevents it from being a sure-fire winner.  The Noirmoutier location has an austere beauty that serves the film well, its dual character - spookily alluring in some shots, bleakly sinister in others  - mirroring that of the central protagonist as his curiosity turns into a destructive obsession.  If Favrat had concentrated more on character and less on plot, if he hadn't felt the necessity to overstate everything to the point that you feel he is making the film for a dim-witted five-year-old, this could have been one of the niftiest French thrillers of the year, rather than one that frequently feels like an over-earnest trudge over all too familiar territory.

Film Synopsis

Having just turned forty, Antoine meets up with his sister Agathe for a meal in a restaurant.  Antoine needs something to distract him from his recent messy divorce and Agathe wants to remember their mother, who died exactly thirty years ago in mysterious circumstances.  Both of these needs, they agree, can be met by a brief return visit to Noirmoutier, the coastal town where they used to spend their holidays as children.  It was also the place where their mother met her untimely death.  Before reaching his destination, Antoine has an accident, which has the effect of bringing to the surface long forgotten memories of the time when his mother died.  Antoine has an uneasy feeling that his mother's death was not an accident, and this appears to be backed up when his family's former maid tells him that her corpse was found ten kilometres away from the house.  In Noirmoutier, Antoine gets on friendly terms with a pathologist, Angèle, who helps him in his impromptu investigation into his mother's death.  He cannot understand why his relatives are so reticent about the matter and this makes him more determined than ever to discover the truth.  Agathe fears that her brother may be heading for a complete mental breakdown...