Le Temps de l'aventure (2013)
Directed by Jérôme Bonnell

Film Review

Through his preoccupation with intense romantic encounters and the delicacy with which he depicts these in his films, Jérôme Bonnell has often been likened to François Truffaut.  This impression can only be reinforced by Le Temps de l'aventure, Bonnell's fifth feature, as it somehow manages to evoke the playfulness of Truffaut's mid-period films (Baisers volés) with the brooding melancholia of his later films (La Femme d'à côté), whilst having a unique identity of its own.  Still barely into his mid-thirties, Bonnell embodies Truffaut's notion of the auteur perfectly, impressing both with the originality and authenticity of his filmmaking and his perceptiveness as a student of human nature.

The plot of Bonnell's latest film is absurdly simple, the classic boy-meets-girl scenario beloved by French filmmakers and audiences alike.  Yet, as he has already demonstrated in his previous films Le Chignon d'Olga (2002) and  Les Yeux clairs (2005), Bonnell has a talent for taking a simple idea and developing it into the most profound exploration of the human psyche. Central to the film is Emmanuelle Devos's engrossing portrayal of a modern woman, Alix, who, having run aground in Paris (ironically on the first day of summer), falls prey to the most virulent bout of amorous infatuation.  Having given a knock-out performance in Bonnell's earlier film J'attends quelqu'un (2007), Devos is ideally suited to play the feisty middle-aged actress who gets caught up in the worst kind of mid-life crisis, with her old certainties shattered and her present reality fracturing into a myriad of future possibilities.

On her arrival in a festive Paris, apparently without money and with no hope of reaching the one person who might be able to lend her a helping hand, Alix resembles a newborn puppy struggling to adapt to its new environment.  The one tangible thing she feels she can hold on to as her world falls apart around her is an overwhelming attraction for the man she met on a train (Gabriel Byrne at his suavest), a man who (being a typical Brit) can speak no French and with whom she can only communicate in prep school English.   At first, the two characters appear ludicrously ill-matched, self-consciously enacting a beefed up version of Brief Encounter, but as the film develops (at a pace some cinemagoers may consider lethargic) we begin to understand the reason for the magnetic attraction between the two disparate individuals.  Both have arrived at a crossroads in their lives and appear ready for a dramatic change of direction.  In the confusion of an existential crisis, where nothing is certain and life is no more than a limbo of delirium, they are drawn to each other like two drowning sailors in a sea storm.

It is tempting to compare Le Temps de l'aventure with Claire Denis's similar film Vendredi soir (2002), which takes a more simplistic view of that mysterious pull which leads to a one-night stand, pretty well reducing it to no more than a primitive bestial impulse.  Not only is Bonnell's film far more poetic and humane than Denis's, it is much more rigorous in its analysis.  Whilst Denis is happy to plod about on the surface,  reworking the old clichés to avoid unnecessary brainstrain and heartache, Bonnell digs much deeper and reminds us of the extent to which our lives are governed by powerful forces that we can never understand - tidal waves of the subconscious that we must learn to surf as best we can.  For anyone who has ever experienced the raging frenzy of a mid-life crisis, Le Temps de l'aventure feels extraordinarily close to the mark, and you can't help wondering how a filmmaker as young as Bonnell could possibly come up with such a vivid and true-to-life depiction of the maelstrom that we must all traverse as we tred the banana-skin strewn path that takes us from youth to maturity.

Film Synopsis

Alix, an actress in her early forties, is performing in a play in Calais.  When her paycheque fails to turn up she becomes anxious and takes the next train to Paris, hoping to hook up with her strangely elusive boyfriend.  During the journey, she makes eye contact with an attractive older man and finds herself drawn to him.  When the train reaches Paris, Alix and the man go their separate ways, neither expecting to see the other again.  But something draws them together and in no time they are caught up in a whirlwind of passion.  Is this merely a wild infatuation, destined to burn itself out before the day is over, or the beginning of something more substantial...?