gans

The hallmark of great directors is their ability to convey a sense of the sacred quality of what we are shown on screen. Guediguian achieves this here with his skillful interweaving of his characters' (largely sordid) lives on the backdrop of his beloved city. Even the least of these people is not beyond the possibility of redemption; Ariane Ascaride's role as the mother of a single-mother heroin addict is particularly powerful. A beautiful film shot with great tenderness.

The point of the vastly extended preparatory phase of this Star is Born story seems to be to make ultimate success all the more sublime. Summer Phoenix is very effective as an inarticulate young woman imprisoned within herself but never convincing as the stage actress of growing fame who both overcomes and profits from this detachment. Even in the lengthy scenes of Esther's acting lessons, we never see her carry out the teacher's instructions. After suffering through Esther's (largely self-inflicted) pain in excruciating detail, we are given no persuasive sense of her triumph.

The obsessive presence of the heroine's pain seems to be meant as a guarantee of aesthetic transcendence. Yet the causes of this pain (poverty, quasi-autism, Judaism, sexual betrayal) never come together in a coherent whole. A 163-minute film with a simple plot should be able to knit up its loose ends. Esther Kahn is still not ready to go before an audience.

The story begins and ends with Sandrine, but never decides whether it's her story or that of a whole *bande* of young people. The relationships between undecided Sandrine, her parents, and her engaged friend Martine are drawn with a depth that contrasts with the sketchy depictions of the male characters and makes us regret the time squandered on tediously repeated scenes (cafe, disco, pad) of adolescent love-life. With a sharper focus and more sense of specificity (there are virtually no establishing shots), the characters might really have come alive. And why show us the heroine in her bathtub? Nudity should reflect a vision other than that of the camera-voyeur.