Alice et Martin

I'm a big Binoche fan but could not have been more disappointed with this film. There is little or no justification given for the demonization of Martin's father and the flat, bland relationship between Alice & Martin leaves one wondering why they'd stay together in the first place. Sure, Techine wants us to think Martin's father was a harsh on his illegitimate son but there's little or no supporting evidence. Standing in the rain, big deal. Punishing him for pretending to be sick. Ho hum. This reminded me of Bresson's "The Devil, Probably" as I really didn't give a damn about any of the characters or why they were in such supposed anguish. Speaking of anguish, you would think Martin's mother would have felt a little remorse about the consequences of her fateful decision (after all, Martin was happy w/ her and didn't want to go) but she didn't seem care about him anyways. In the end, I didn't either.

"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)

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

Martin, age 20, runs away from his rural French home under mysterious circumstances and ends up at his half-brother's flat in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with the half-brother's female roommate Alice, age somewhat older. When Alice informs him, halfway through the film, that she is pregnant, he has a flashback (which we don't see for a while yet) of what happened to make him flee his father's house, and for the rest of the film, while Martin languishes in a psychiatric facility, Alice must resolve the situation Martin created, a labor of love she doesn't hesitate to perform even though it involves the sacrifice of her own happiness.

The bad news: This is a long, slow movie, and the characters are not really as well-defined as they perhaps could have been, especially given the film's character-centered plot. The good news: It's really beautiful to watch, and when the end of the movie sneaks up on you, and you've given what you've seen a little while to sink in, it's so brilliantly sad that you just want to fly to Paris and find Alice and hug her or take her to dinner or something. Not a good choice for a first-date movie--rent the video and have a close friend over for wine and cheese.