Baden Baden

In her feature film debut writer/director Rachel Lang portraits young, reckless and aimless Ana, a 26 year old girl who steals a car from the company she works for to go to her grandmother in Strasbourg for a summer of big changes and decisions. "Baden Baden" unfolds its story as a series of many funny and some sad vignettes tied together by Ana's redecorating of her grandmother's bathroom, which stands as a metaphor for rebuilding her own life.

As aimless as Ana is, Lang's work is nothing like it. She tells the story with remarkable assuredness and great skill, something rarely found in the first-time director. Impressive cinematography (Fiona Braillon), great editing (Sophie Vercruysse) and excellent choice of music (Rachel Lang) are all of great significance in creating the film's unique atmosphere, and of course, it doesn't hurt that leading lady Salome Richard, herself a newcomer, shines as Ana, buying our sympathies from the very first scene.

"Baden Baden" mixes comedy, tragedy and simple ordinary life in the best ways possible and, although it probably isn't poised to make an impact on the history of film, it definitely makes an impact on the viewers. It is a film that shouldn't be missed.

I sometimes wonder how certain movies ever get made. This is a case in point. The script is very much less than the sum of its parts and the acting veers from risible to very good. The very good being Claude Gensac who plays Ana's Grandmother and Lazarre Gousseau, who plays Gregoire. The implausible story just doesn't go anywhere and the movie is like watching a random episode of TV series. It starts and finishes with no explanation as to what is going on or why. All we know is that Ana is a bit of a loser who doesn't have any kind of idea about anything and cares less about it all, except for Grandmother who she runs to when she has nowhere else to go. She decides to install a new shower while her Grandmother is in hospital but where does she get the money? She has no job and not much in the way of brains it would seem. There are various dead-end threads that wave around in the breeze, like Boris the supposed artist whose mother lives in a very expensive apartment. He's a rotter and she has some history with him but that's all we know. Likewise the former boyfriend Simon - the unlikely named Swann Arlaud - with whom she shares a shower in a motel and her body on regular occasions. The only nice guy is Gregoire - Lazarre Gousseau - who helps her with the bathroom but she doesn't go for nice guys, as he discovers.

The end of the movie is unbelievable. I don't think I've seen anything like it. Ana goes off with yet another bloke who she doesn't even know and who doesn't really want to know her, they sit in a field next to Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut (we don't know why) and then...It just stops. I can only imagine that either they ran out money or just gave up and went home. There must be better scripts out there than this, surely? I wouldn't recommend you to spend your time with this dismal effort, it's just not worth it. The movie should be called Bad Bad instead of Baden Baden.

"Baden Baden" follows the story of Ana (Salomé Richard) in her mid-20s figuring out life. She looks like Dakota Johnson in a pixie cut. Ana gets yelled at by her boss, sings and literally drives her frustration away and shortly after, gets ticketed. She makes new friends, rekindles past romance, and meets potential lovers. She also bonds with her parents, occasionally.

In what could be considered the film's conflict, Ana's softspoken and witty grandmother (Claude Gensac) was kept for hospital treatment after she slipped in the bathroom. Remaking her toilet, she seeks help from Grégoire (Lazare Gousseau), an awkward store assistant who has a crush on her. In a humorous scene, they both grunt and hump and yank the bathtub out of the tiles the camera made them look like they're clumsily copulating.

"Funny parts were funny, boring parts were boring" was my off-the-cuff reply when a colleague asked my thoughts about it, to the her laughter. But I stand by what I said. With a good soundtrack, this dramedy film has moments of hilarity and hints of realism but unluckily overshadowed by bland and dull sequences.

Dramatic bits, involving family conversations, hinted somber themes. Like light seedheads moving through the blows of the wind, Ana navigates her pathless journey through people she meets.

As a whole, however, it looks like a failed attempt on the slice of life genre. Its lack of structure and ambiguous dreams scenes worked against it. Life's tediousness instead of innocent mundanity was unintentionally mirrored.

The dream-like imagery involves Ana wandering in the misty woods naked, perhaps reflecting how she is free and lost in the wilderness. But it's insertion was ambitious enough it felt shoehorned and detached from the groundedness of the film.

It could be that I just didn't get it, as the guy who enjoyed only the amusing parts. But if that's true I'm not the one to blame for I tried my best to get it--and I tried hard--and in experiencing films of this kind, one should not.

Original unrevised review first appeared on Atenews (08/03/2019)