Alice und Martin

The French movie Alice et Martin (1998) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Alice and Martin. The film was co-written and directed by André Téchiné.

Juliette Binoche portrays Alice, a professional violinist who lives with Benjamin Sauvagnac, a gay playwright and actor. (Benjamin is played by Mathieu Amalric.) Alexis Loret portrays Martin Sauvagnac, Benjamin's half-brother.

Martin comes from the countryside to Paris, and moves in with Alice and Benjamin. Naturally, he falls in love with Alice. The rest of the plot spins out as a relationship story between Alice and Martin, as the name of the film implies.

Téchiné is a great director. Brioche is a great actor. This should have been a don't-miss movie. Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I think that part of the problem is that Alice is depicted as unsure and dependent. That's not really the way we usually see Juliette Binoche, and she appears unsure and dependent playing that role. Anyway, the magic doesn't happen.

We saw this movie on the small screen, and it worked well. It has a dismal IMDb rating of 6.3. I thought it was somewhat better than that, and rated it 7.

Andre Techine is a director that likes to portray the problems young people are facing, which seems what attracted him to "Alice et Martin", a film that gives us a strange take in how the past catches up with a young man that challenged his father's authority. The screen play is by Olivier Assayas and Gilles Taurand, two men that have had written better things for the cinema.

The film's opening sequence is puzzling since we have no clue as to what makes Martin run away from home. This seems to be a disjointed way to make the film work, because even though we might guess what could have happened, when the final truth comes about, we just don't care about it.

Then there is the problem of Alice's attraction for Martin. Alice is a woman that seems to know what she wants. She is older than the young guy that comes into her life, and should have been wiser to avoid, at all costs, but she falls for him, anyhow.

Basically, what attracted us to the film was Juliette Binoche, an actress that is always interesting to watch. Unfortunately, because our lack of interest in the story, we stop caring about her long before we get to know what really happened. Alexis Loret is a weak choice for Martin. Mathiew Amalric and Carmen Maura fare better in their supporting roles.

"Alice et Martin" is a slow moving film that will get in the nerves of viewers. Better luck to M. Techine in his next effort.

In her review of 'Alice et Martin' in Cinopsis, Marina Bergamelli states that the reason why Techine made this film remains obscure.

For those people who understand and know that such emotional worlds exist, it is a cathartic masterpiece of great value.

It takes courage to make a feature film of this nature and am grateful to the people who undertook such an artistic endeavour.

Film would be dead without them.

Julian Flynn

Once a critic for Cahiers Du Cinéma, André Téchiné wakes generally high expectations from movie viewers, but he not always satisfied them. The interest for melodrama that distinguishes him from nouvelle vague predecessors returns in Alice and Martin which is not free from the thematic of dysfunctional family of others of his films. In this case the results are more unconvincing. At the beginning and for a long time we don't know what happens, and when we know, it does not matter enough. The disproportion between the elliptical and not few scenes of unnecessary diffuse dialogue does not contribute to go deep into the drama. Secondary characters like the tyrannical father, the mother, and the stepmother of the protagonist are delineated in the style of the stereotyped Spanish telenovela. The nicely photographed landscapes (a mark in Téchiné's pictures) add to the pleasure of the viewer but not fulfill the holes in the screenplay. The story, excessively charged with family quarrels, suicide, involuntary crime, tempestuous love, professional aspirations, madness, atonement, and final redemption, can't easily catch the spectator. Adam Gai

"Alice and Martin (Alice et Martin)" is the anti-Hollywood relationship movie of the summer. (It's French so you have to say it like you went to National Lampoon's famous School of ze French Akzent: "a-LEES ay mar-TAHN").

Act 1 gives you background on Martin growing up, yeah you think as you get restless, the usual dysfunctional family, the usual fights with dad, so he ends up in the big city.

Act 2 is the usual couple in the Big City (in this case, of course Paris) and quite a few people in the audience yawned quite loudly. There's a few sophisticated touches -- she's pals with gay guys, he falls into being a fashion model for the easy money (and the metaphor for his blankness) so there's arguments about commercialism.

This is my first Andre Techine film so I don't know if the crucial Act 3 is unusual, even though the central plot development was not a complete surprise.

So many Hollywood "meet cute, fall into bed, fight then realize they're made for each other" movies have the couple existing in a bubble, separate from family or the sources of how they got to be like they are. Here coming to terms with their souls means coming to terms with their family and seeing through all the implications. So there's a bit of a gimmick in cutting back and forth with flashbacks to reveal background to us, but it's done sort of like an amnesia victim gradually remembering.

Juliette Binoche really rises to the Act 3; I wasn't all that impressed with her in "The English Patient" but she's gut-wrenching here, going through very complex emotions--and nice non-Hollywood touch that she's the older of the pair.

If Hollywood were to remake this movie, they'd cut to the last 10 minutes, and turn it into a courtroom drama where the heroic defense lawyer goes around interviewing everyone to get to "the truth," but coming to peace with yourself is not something that litigation can solve, and Binoche's face shows that.

Nice repeat use of Jeff Buckley song.

(originally written 9/3/2000)