Espèces menacées (2017)
Directed by Gilles Bourdos

Film Review

Espèces menacées is the fifth feature from director Gilles Bourdos, who is most widely known for his lush 2012 biopic Renoir (2012).  Taking short stories by the American writer Richard Bausch, the film interweaves three separate strands concerned with failed romances and strained family relationships set in the Riviera town of Nice.  Despite its polished presentation and some exemplary acting, the film struggles to cohere into a satisfying whole and appears too content to hover above the surface of human relationships without digging too deeply or saying anything particularly profound.  It is a film that engages your sympathies and interest but you struggle to connect with it in a meaningful way.

On the plus side, Espèces menacées is beautifully shot, with photographer Ping Bin Lee packing as much visual artistry as possible into his astonishingly fluid cinematography.  There is an impressive cast who make the most of the mediocre material they have to play with, with Alice Isaaz giving her best performance to date as the young bride who receives a rude awakening on her wedding night.  Vincent Rottiers, Grégory Gadebois, Suzanne Clément and Alice de Lencquesaing all help to raise the film's game, with solid character turns that deliver some powerful moments, albeit too intermittently to make up for the complacent superficiality of the screenwriting.

By the midpoint, it is apparent that Bourdos and his co-writer Michel Spinosa are not quite up to the job of tackling such an ambitious project, and whilst there are passages where the film is dramatically strong, it fails to make the connections between the three intertwining story strands work effectively.  Espèces menacées is a modest improvement on Bourdos's previous work, but, let down by its writing, it isn't as deep and emotionally rewarding as it deserves to be, given the calibre of its cast.

Film Synopsis

One winter, three families living in the French town of Nice are beset with personal dramas that threaten to upset their plans for a peaceful life.  Despite her parents barely disguised disapproval, Joséphine has just married Tomas and is convinced that he will make the ideal husband.  Her certainties over this point are cruelly shattered in the course of their honeymoon on the Riviera, when Tomas reveals his true nature and shows himself to be anything but the perfect life partner.  Immature, selfish and prone to fits of violence, Tomas isn't so much a beau idéal as a ticking time-bomb.

Meanwhile, another young woman nearby is having problems of her own.  Mélanie Lamblin has just broken the news to her father Joseph that she is pregnant.  Worse still is the revelation that the father of her unborn child is Yann Petersen, a university professor forty years her senior.  Joseph and his wife Marie, who are on the point of separating, can scarcely takes this news in.  Meanwhile, one of Petersen's students, Anthony Gardet, faces an even greater emotional crisis.  Unlucky in love, he must now give up his studies in Paris to devote himself to the care of his mentally ill mother, whose state of health has declined progressively since her husband left her...