Les Voleurs (1996)
Directed by André Téchiné

Film Review

His standing as one of France's leading auteur filmmakers assured with such insightful works as Le Lieu du crime (1986), Les Innocents (1987) and Les Roseaux sauvages (1994), André Téchiné garnered further international acclaim with Les Voleurs, his most ambitious and complex film to date.  After its lukewarm reception at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, this polar-framed meditation on predestination and the limits of free will went on to become one of the director's most successful films, lauded by the critics and achieving an audience of just under one million in France.  It was nominated for five Césars in 1997, in categories that included Best Film and Best Director, although it received only one award, for Most Promising Actress (Laurence Côte).

Nearing the mid-point of his illustrious career, Téchiné was continuing to experiment with form and style, eschewing the conventions of realist and genre cinema in pursuit of a more personal approach that would serve him in his ardent attempts to unravel and dissect the mysteries of the human psyche.  Les Voleurs is a particularly daring film in this regard, employing an episodic structure in which the narrative abruptly jumps back and forth in time, with flashbacks and flashforwards that each favour a different character's point-of-view (in the manner of Kurosawa's classic Rashomon).

The film has the trappings of a traditional French crime drama (which might account for its surprising box office success), but, as in a good Hitchcock film, it is the characters, not the plot, that interest us.  By brazenly hijacking the classic French policier with its familiar tropes (including the disillusioned loner cop and a meticulously planned heist that is doomed to fail), Téchiné finds yet one more way to delve into the profundities of human existence,  As in his earlier film Le Lieu du crime, the writer-director takes us on a bleakly philosophical journey in which he explores the limits of personal freedom, more than hinting at the illusory nature of free will.

Les Voleurs is in essence film noir, one in which the genre's depressing existential underpinnings are more thoughtfully and humanely dealt with than most of its classic variations of the 1940s and '50s.  What all of the characters in this film have in common is a manifest inability to escape from the personal hells in which they have become trapped.  For some, it is the strength of family ties (the result of genetic inheritance or kinship loyalties) that limit their actions; for others it is simply a lack of will-power, moral fibre or simply money. Téchiné's thesis would appear to echo Émile Zola's idea that an absolute determinism is at the core of all human experience.

The 'Thieves' of the title can be attached not only to those characters who are caught up in the gangster milieu, earning their dishonest crust by stealing cars in the dead of night, but also to those who ostensibly lead more honest lives, their crime being to prey on others for emotional support, intellectual stimulus or sexual gratification, offering little if anything in return.

The French word 'voler' means 'to fly' as well as to steal, and it is readily apparent than many of the characters in the film are desperate to take flight, to start a new life, but with little hope of making this a reality.  It is the bold artifices that Les Voleurs uses with such confidence - the jarring back-and-forth narrative construction, the liberal use of first-person voiceover narration, the eerily oppressive music, the fluid camerawork - that allow it to convey such a crushing sense of fatalism.   Few of André Téchiné's films are as remorselessly pessimistic as this, and yet there is also a seductively lyrical quality to the film that makes it one of his more compelling and rewarding works.   

One of the things that sets Téchiné apart from many of his auteur contemporaries is that he has never shied away from using some of France's biggest name actors.  For Les Voleurs, he assembles a cast of impeccable pedigree, headed by French acting legend Catherine Deneuve.  Three and half decades after making her big screen debut, Deneuve was now at the height of her powers, her magnetic personality and iconic physical beauty now joined by a more mature approach to acting which allows her to engage with an audience at a deeply visceral level through her blisteringly authentic portrayals of the modern woman.  Téchiné's actress of choice, she has so far appeared in eight of his films, but in Les Voleurs, their fourth collaboration, she is particularly well-cast as an emotionally fragile philosophy teacher decorously impaled on the cusp of a mid-life crisis.

Deneuve is all the better for being cast opposite an actor of comparable talent and charisma, Daniel Auteuil - the two had previously worked together on an earlier André Téchiné film, the highly recommended Ma saison préférée (1993).  Les Voleurs's strongest scenes are those in which these two remarkable actors are given the chance to spar off one another with some sublime dialogue, on each occasion laying bare there characters' inner souls in a way that feels almost indecently pornographic.

Auteuil is on particularly good form here, utterly convincing as the hopelessly conflicted cop trying - and failing - to sever connections from the criminal family he has come to loathe.  Auteuil's Alex is the classic noir hero - a sad remnant of a man who just cannot put his damning past behind him.  By opting to be a law enforcer rather than a law breaker, Alex only succeeds in tightening the elastic connecting him to his good-for-nothing family.  Try as he might to be a worthier member of society, he is tainted by association and will never be able to break free.  Robbed of the prospect of a fulfilling career and a family of his own, he leads an empty life in the familiar landscape of the solitary noir outsider - a dark and loveless world.

The more we see of Auteuil's Alex and Deneuve's Marie the more similar they seem to be.  Both have troubled pasts which now hold them captive in an unfulfilled limbo state of existence; both appear massively confused over their sexuality; and both have a yearning to escape that can never be realised - although Marie does ultimately manage to find a way out, albeit not in the way that may legitimately be termed a happy ending.  Their twinned natures make it plausible that Alex and Marie should be drawn to the same person, an androgynous young woman named Juliette who appears to offer what they both need - rough, no-strings sex for Alex; intellectual and emotional stimulation for Marie.

It is through their turbulent relationship with Juliette that Alex and Marie are able to show their contrasting natures.  We have only to compare the film's two most intimate scenes - one in which Alex subjects Juliette to the most animalistic bout of love-making, the other in which Marie and Juliette tenderly share a bath together - to see just how far apart they are internally.  Alex represses his emotions to the point that he appears not to have the slightest vestige of true feeling, whereas Marie is so governed by emotionality that she just cannot help empathising with others, even a young hoodlum she has only known a few minutes.  The monstrous excess of emotional restraint in one is mirrored by a visible lack of restraint in the other - both are equally damaging.  Too much feeling can be as deadly as too little.

As impressive as A-listers Deneuve and Auteuil are in this film, it is the third of the principal artistes, Laurence Côte, that ends up making the greatest impact.  Through a combination of exceptional writing and extraordinarily nuanced acting, Côte's Juliette emerges as Les Voleur's most intriguing and fully developed character - the only one who manages to defy the President of the Immortals and escape to a better future.  Fitting the bill as both thief and fugitive, Juliette embodies the double meaning of the film's title, but, more significant than this, what marks her out is that Téchiné makes her the hub around which all of the other characters rotate in their orbits of perpetual misery.

At no point in the film can we be certain that Juliette has any prospect of a happy outcome.  It seems so obvious that she is destined to share the same fate as her cocksure brother Jimmy (Benoît Magimel at his best), ending up trapped in a life of crime with a premature death being the best she can hope for.  The only alternative open to her seems to be to follow Marie's example as a suicidal neurotic, and in the film's most shocking scene this possible exit comes all too close as we witness the horrific spectacle of her protector desperately struggling to stop her swallowing some broken glass.  Juliette - unlike her Shakespearean namesake - somehow manages to evade the tragic denouement to which she seems to be fatally drawn.  Just as one unlikely conspiracy of circumstances leads to Ivan's violent death, so another provides the young student with a chance way out of her threadless labyrinth.

If Juliette manages to avoid getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, the same cannot be said for Justin, Alex's 10-year-old son, through whose blameless eyes the film opens.  Visibly traumatised by the shock death of his father Ivan (a criminally under-utilised Didier Bezace), Justin's fate is sealed as soon as he picks up the latter's gun for the first time, accepting as he does so his fatal inheritance.  We catch a horrifying glimpse into the boy's future when, in a latter scene, he threatens his well-meaning uncle with a fairground rifile.  The expression that we see in the eyes of this supposed innocent is one that instantly chills the blood - it is the unmistakable look of a cold-blooded and merciless killer.  Whatever we may wish for the characters in Les Voleurs one thing is certain. There can be no possibility of escape for Justin.

Film Synopsis

After the sudden death of his brother Ivan, Lyon-based cop Alex returns to the family home in the Rhône-Alpes with his girlfriend Juliette.  Relations between Alex and the rest of his family have become strained since his decision to go his own way, opting to be a police officer rather than a career criminal.  Before his death, Alex headed a gang of car thieves whilst passing himself off as the respectable owner of a successful nightclub.  The person who is most affected by the hoodlum's demise is his ten-year old son Justin, who becomes moody and withdrawn, shunning his uncle's attempts at consolation.

The first time Alex met Juliette was after she had been arrested for shoplifting, so desperate was she to obtain money to pay for her university education.  Later, the young woman gets a job working for Ivan in his nightclub, and this is how Alex is able to renew their acquaintance.  Succumbing to a strong mutual attraction, the cop and the student are soon pursuing a desultory love affair, meeting up every so often in cheap hotels for casual sex.  The liaison has little in the way of emotional connection, but this Juliette obtains through an intimate lesbian relationship with her philosophy teacher, Marie Leblanc.  A 50-something divorcee, Marie is badly in need of emotional support, and this is what Juliette provides, along with possible material for her next book.

It so happens that Juliette's brother Jimmy belongs to Ivan's gang.  Ignoring Jimmy's protestations, Juliette herself becomes embroiled in Ivan's criminal activities and agrees to take part in a nocturnal raid on a train depot.  Caught in the act by armed security guards, Ivan is shot dead and his accomplices, including Juliette, narrowly evade capture.  Psychologically damaged by this experience and the prospect of being picked up by the police, Juliette turns to Marie for help and attempts suicide.

Not long after Marie has arranged for Juliette to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, she is contacted by Alex, who is anxious to discover what has become of his missing lover.  It seems that Juliette is now out of harm's way, since the one witness to the heist mistook her for a man.  Ignorant of this fact, the young woman checks out of her hospital and disappears without trace.  Having sent Alex a manuscript based on innumerable conversations she has had with Juliette, Marie kills herself, leaving the cop with no option but to track down his erstwhile lover.  As Jimmy takes his place at the head of Ivan's criminal gang, his sister Juliette tries to make a new life for herself in Marseille.