Le Refuge (2010)
Directed by François Ozon

Film Review

After a bizarre detour which took in the kitsch historical drama Angel (2007) and the whimsical fantasy Ricky (2009), director François Ozon returns to the kind of intimate realist drama to which he is perhaps better suited.   Le Refuge, his eleventh feature, brims with the warped mystique and poetry of Ozon's previous Sous le sable (2000) and 5x2 (2001), offering an even more subtle exploration of the perversity of human nature.  Eschewing the exaggerated stylisation of his earlier films, Ozon now embraces a more vigorously naturalistic approach to filmmaking, a sign maybe that French cinema's most celebrated enfant terrible has come of age and now has the confidence to tackle more serious themes in a more direct way.

Le Refuge came about when Ozon was given the heaven-sent opportunity of making use of the real life pregnancy of the actress Isabelle Carré, with whom he had not previously worked but whom he greatly admired.  Films featuring pregnant women are few and far between, and those in which a visibly pregnant actress takes the lead role are pretty well non existent.  So, ever eager to break taboos and start a new trend, Ozon follows Carré on her pregnancy, using every opportunity he can to show both the inward and outward effects of pregnancy - the transformation of both the body and the mind.  With a less charismatic and beautiful actress, the experiment could easily have been a disaster, but with Carré's generous complicity Ozon crafts a film that is perhaps his most fascinating and alluring to date, one that certainly treads new ground in its exploration of the mysteries of maternity, as seen from both a male and female perspective.

The male side of the equation is sensitively supplied by Louis-Ronan Choisy, an established popular singer (better known as 'Louis') in his first film role.  Choisy not only proves to be a very capable actor, convincing and instantly likeable as Carré's platonic soul mate, he also composed the film's score and sings its theme song in one exquisitely moving sequence.   The two lead actors complement each other perfectly.  Both appear naturally suited to playing marginal characters who are incapable of expressing their feelings outwardly, and yet manage to convey so much more of what lies beneath the surface, fragile creatures groping for something tangible in a world in which they appear constantly ill at ease.

That the film was made in something of a hurry is evident from the screenplay, which lacks the rigour of Ozon's previous screen compositions.  However, even this seems to work in the film's favour, giving it a spontaneity and acuity that is found only in the director's early, short films.  Le Refuge isn't so much a polished piece of cinema as a kind of improvised visual poem which allows the spectator to make of it what he or she will.  The two main characters, whilst skilfully portrayed by two immensely talented actors, remain stubbornly hard to fathom, as ambiguous and surprising as any that Ozon has so far created.  Like a Chopin nocturne, the film is quietly enchanting as it plays on our senses, but it has a lingering aftertaste that is both solemn and haunting.  Far from unravelling the great mystery of child birth, Ozon lends it even further mystique, in what is surely his most daring film to date.

Film Synopsis

Mousse and Louis are a young couple who are deliriously in love with one another.  But love is not enough to sustain their happy idyll and so they resort to taking drugs.  The outcome is tragically predictable.  Louis dies from an overdose of heroine, and Mousse only just escapes the same fate.  As she recovers in hospital Mousse discovers that she is pregnant with Louis's child.  Unsure what to do next, the young woman flees to a country house by the sea, far from the hubbub of Paris.  A few months later, Louis's brother Paul shows up and asks if he can stay with her.  Mousse is inevitably drawn to the young man who resembles her dead partner in so many ways.  Even when she learns that he is gay she still finds she is attached to him, as if he somehow holds the key to all her problems...