J'enrage de son absence (2012)
Directed by Sandrine Bonnaire

Film Review

In 2007 Sandrine Bonnaire made her directorial debut with Elle s'appelle Sabine, a documentary in which the acclaimed actress presented an intimate and intensely poignant portrait of her autistic sister.  Five years on, she directed her first fictional drama, which was similarly prompted by a personal incident in her life.  J'enrage de son absence deals sensitively and imaginatively with a subject that is abject in its emotional impact, a parent trying and failing to come to terms with the death of a child in early infancy.  It is not the easiest of matters to broach, even for a director of many years' experience, but Bonnaire tackles it with the same qualities that have made her one of her country's most admired actors - sensitivity, compassion and unflinching honesty - and the result is a moving yet eerily off-beat drama.

Sandrine Bonnaire learned her art by working with some of France's greatest film directors - Maurice Pialat, Agnès Varda, Jacques Rivette,  and Claude Chabrol to name just four.  The influence of these titanic auteurs of French cinema impinges heavily on J'enrage de son absence, and it's an unsettling mix, the granite realism of Pialat interlaced with the suffocating aura of Chabrol's gloomier thrillers.  Although she has doubtless been greatly influenced by the legends she has worked with, Bonnaire appears not to have attempted a slavish imitation of their work but instead forges her own, very distinctive approach, one that has a brutal masculinity about it.  There is a potent humanity to this film but there is also a cruel, almost nihilistic edge to it.  The central character Jacques (played by American actor William Hurt, Bonnaire's former husband) is not someone we can readily identify with, and yet we cannot fail to be moved by the tragic hopelessness of his predicament, a man constantly yearning for something to fill the void caused by a child's death.

It is Hurt's astonishingly true-to-life performance - quite possibly his best to date - that makes J'enrage de son absence such a memorable and haunting piece of cinema.  The emptiness that rages within Jacques' tormented soul is forcibly thrust into our own hearts by Hurt (how apt is that name) and for anyone who has ever experienced the tragic loss of a loved one the film has an astounding and bitter resonance.  As the woman confronted with the nightmare of an ex-partner's destructive obsession, Alexandra Lamy has seldom given a performance of such blistering authenticity, and as for little Jalil Mehenni, captivating in his first screen role, all that can be said is that he is a natural heart stealer.

J'enrage de son absence could so easily have ended up as a trite melodrama, but Bonnaire and her seasoned co-screenwriter Jérôme Tonnerre deliver something far bleaker, far more ambiguous and far more tragic.  Although the narrative follows a fairly predictable course the visual style, the mood, the editing and other directorial choices Bonnaire makes (note the subtle but effective use of jump cutting within a scene) lend it the feel of a strange mix of crushingly realistic docu-drama and nightmarish fantasy.  The darkness that surrounds Jacques and ultimately engulfs him has a suffocating reality to it - you can actually feel it taking hold and draw you into the abyss...  For the past three decades Sandrine Bonnaire has astounded us with her talents as an actress.  Now it appears that she could well do the same as a director, if her second feature is anything to go by.

Film Synopsis

Ten years after they went their separate ways following the breakdown of their marriage, Jacques makes a sudden reappearance in Mado's life. Whilst Jacques has been unable to move on and build a new life for himself, Mado has married another man, Stéphane, with whom she has had a son, Paul, now seven years old.  It was the tragic death of their child which led to Jacques and Mado's separation, and it is something which Jacques has been unable to put behind him.  When she sees how Jacques and Paul warm to one another, Mado becomes concerned and insists that her ex-partner he should never see her son again.  Unwilling or unable to let go of the tragedy that still haunts him Jacques holds a private vigil in the basement of the apartment block where Mado and her family live, just so that he can be near to the little boy who has come to replace the one he has lost...