Film Review
Those who appreciate Manuel Poirier's languid, delicately
undemonstrative style of cinema will doubtless warm to
La Maison, his most emotionally
introspective film to date. The film explores, with Poirier's
habitual warmth and sensitivity, the devastating power that childhood
memories can exert over us, even when we are well into adulthood,
threatening out relationships with others and preventing us from
finding happiness elsewhere. It is a theme that has rarely been
tackled in cinema but which, on the strength of what this film offers,
is one that clearly merits further exploration. After all, one of
the most potent relationships we have as adults is the one that we have
with our childhood past, a relationship that gives us our identity but
which also robs us of our freedom. The house that features in
Poirier's film symbolises the burden of childhood, representing both
the safe haven we long to return to and the prison from which we can
never escape.
La Maison marks the ninth
collaboration of Poirier with his favourite actor Sergi López,
who is perfectly suited for the director's understated, emotionally
repressed approach to film drama. López's fragile
machismo is well-matched by the pent-up sensuality of his co-star,
Bérénice Bejo, who shows great promise as a straight
dramatic actress (having established herself as a capable
comedienne). As ever, Poirier gets the best out of his actors,
although their efforts are occasionally undermined by some heavyhanded
screenwriting. The film's one big failing is a narrative
structure which at times feels painfully clunky, disrupting the natural
rhythm of the film. One instance of this is the scene after
the auction in which the mysterious rival bidder is revealed - this
scene is pretty well superfluous and serves merely to scuttle the
emotional power of the preceding sequence and the one that follows
it. Similarly, the way in which Cloé and her sister are
introduced, via a similarly disjointed narrative jump, works against
the film's natural flow. How much more coherent and poignant the
film would have been if Poirier had stuck with a single point of view
(Malo's), instead of embarking on an a series of haphazard digressions
purely for narrative expediency.
Fortunately, López's performance (easily one of his best to
date) is sufficient to carry us through Poirier's occasional scripting
mishaps and the film not only manages to hold our attention but also
moves us in ways that are subtle and hard to define. The charm of
Poirier's cinema lies not so much in what it says (which generally is
fairly banal and uninteresting) but in the way in which it compels us
to reflect on our own, similar experiences, and regard them in a new
light. Whilst some may carp about its obvious imperfections,
La Maison is a film that is
sincerely crafted and means something - a worthy follow-up to its
director's previous noteworthy meditations on life,
Marion
(1997),
Western
(1997) and
Te quiero
(2001).
© James Travers 2011
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Next Manuel Poirier film:
Le Café du pont (2010)
Film Synopsis
Malo is a forty-something father of three children who is in the
process of getting a divorce. One day, whilst out with his
friends Rémi and Nathalie, he notices a house which is due to be
sold at auction. The house, a solitary building far from the busy
town, intrigues him and he goes inside. In the bare living room,
he finds a letter, a letter written by a small girl named Cloé
to her father. Moved by the letter, Malo makes enquiries and
tracks down the woman who wrote it, many years ago. Cloé
and her sister have been forced to sell their house after their father
died leaving them with a stack of debts. Malo realises that the
house still means a great deal to Cloé so he decides to attend
the auction to buy it for her. Unfortunately, Cloé's
former neighbour is just as determined to get his hands on the house
and the land that surrounds it...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.