Lovers (1999)
Directed by Jean-Marc Barr

Film Review

For his first film as a director, French-American actor Jean-Marc Bory (best known for his leading role in Luc Besson's Le Grand bleu (1988)) attempts to merge the French New Wave cinema of the early 1960s with a comparable experimental approach of the 1990s, Dogme 95. The latter was pioneered by French director Lars Von Trier with his film Les Idiots and attempts a new form of film making, recording on video tape with hand-held cameras and avoiding artificial light, creating the illusion of spontaneity and intimacy with the subject.  Unfortunately, as this film shows, the two approaches, New Wave and Dogme 95, are fundamentally irreconcilable, and what we get is largely an unsatisfactory distillation of the worst of both worlds.  Barr was also handicapped by the fact that, by the time he made this film, Dogme 95 was becoming unfashionable.

That not with standing, strong performances from the two lead actors (Bouchez and Trifunovic) and some attractive location filming in Paris makes this an engaging and poignant film.  The film's premise is that love, unlike citizenship, has no boundaries and that, in a better world, may be, people should be allowed to stay where love is.  The film's ending is heart-rending and masterfully down-played.

The least satisfactory aspect of this film is that it tends to get stuck  in a groove on a number of occasions and doesn't seem to know when to move on.  On other occasions, things move too quickly and the audience is left struggling to keep up.  Also, having the two lovers communicate in broken English is far from satisfactory.  True, it emphasises the impression of the lovers' feelings towards one another, by imposing the language barrier which both have to struggle to overcome.  However, it compels the audience to endure some awful dialogue which is a real put off, particularly for English-speaking viewers.  Worse, it looks like a sop to the film distributors in an attempt to make the film more marketable in English-speaking countries. Despite its noticeable imperfections, this is a film that is worth seeing, if only for its unusual handling of a familiar theme.

Film Synopsis

Jeanne, a young woman in her twenties, works in a bookshop in Paris.  One day, a good-looking man of about her own age enters the shop in search of a book on the painter Rossetti.  As soon as they make eye-contact, he and Jeanne are instantly drawn to one another.  Before they know it, the two are carried away on a tide of passion.  He is called Dragan and comes from Yugoslavia.  His ambition is to be a successful painter.  The intensity of Jeanne's feelings for him takes him by surprise at first, but he does not resist the pull of an overwhelming physical attraction.

Dragan takes his new lover to parties to meet his friends and share his Bohemian lifestyle, but his tempestuous nature and his unpredictable excesses occasionally cause Jeanne to wonder whether he is the right man for her.  She is more idealistic and introverted than he is, but despite their differences they seem to make an inseparable couple.  Then a routine police check looks set to put an end to the lovers' happy idyll.  It seems that Dragan is an illegal immigrant and has just three days to leave the country.  Jeanne is scarcely able to take this news in...