Film Review
Mouton, an idiosyncratic debut
feature from Gilles Deroo and Marianne Pistone, has all the hallmarks
of a bold but flawed exercise in
cinéma
vérité - one which, lacking the courage of its
convictions or any real sense of purpose, seems to have succumbed to a
fatal dose of self-conscious whimsy and ends up looking weirdly like a
half-hearted parody of a Bruno Dumont film. Shot on 16mm film with a cast
of capable non-professional actors,
Mouton
certainly has the distinctive austere grittiness of a Dumont or
Dardenne brothers film, but there is something missing, some essential
quality that will repay the spectator's attention and make the whole
thing worthwhile. It's not at all clear what the film is meant to
be about. Is it a sombre reflection on the pointlessness of
existence in a godless universe? Is it intended to remind
us of the inter-connectedness of our lives, showing how we are
diminished when someone we know is taken from us? Or is it
something less profound, a bland still life into which we may read what
we choose?
Mouton is - literally - a film
of two halves, the first half being by far the most digestible.
Adopting a raw documentary style, the film's authors present a grimly
authentic slice of life which dwells languorously on the humdrum
banalities of life in the dullest of French seaside towns. At the
centre of this solemn meditation on the ordinariness of existence is an
easily victimised young man (nicknamed 'Mouton' for reasons that are
never given) whose main function appears to be to provide the narrative
with a convenient sacrificial lamb. Just when we begin to warm to
Mouton and take an interest in his spectacularly uneventful life he is
snatched from us. It's like the shower scene in
Psycho all over again.
Unfortunately, there is no Anthony Perkins to make up for the ejection
of Janet Leigh. And no shower.
Mouton's sudden and dramatic removal from the picture - glimpsed only
in long shot as if it were an event of no consequence - allows the film
to progress to its second half, which is essentially more of the same,
but with a Mouton-shaped hole impinging to varying degrees on the
emotional lives of the dead man's acquaintances. The rambling realism
of the film's first half is brutally tamed, thanks to the imposition of
an ordered series of chapters introduced by title cards and voice over
narration. It is here that the film lets go the very quality that
made the first half endurable - a crisp sense of spontaneity.
With the likeable Mouton out of the frame the film that bears his name
becomes tediously episodic and repetitive. Deroo and Pistone
deserve some credit for attempting something a little different but you
can't help feeling that their creativity needs to be more tightly
focussed in order to have the impact it merits.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
17-year-old Aurélien, known to his friends as Mouton, is happily
employed at a fish restaurant in Courseulles-sur-Mer, a small town on
the Normandy coast. His is a simple but contented life which ends
in a tragic accident three years later at a ball in honour of
Sainte-Anne. Now that Mouton has gone the friends that remain
must come to terms with his loss...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.