L'adversaire

The magnificent Daniel Auteuil is ... well ... magnificent once again in this study of a common man whose world turns unaccountably pear-shaped, and who is powerless to get out of the increasingly large hole he's dug for himself. The sequencing of the film is very neatly done - we know from the word 'go' that Faure has done something horrendous, we're pretty sure what it is, and we are led to find out why through a complex series of flashbacks. The art of Auteuil is in his ability to make Faure a sympathetic character, despite his many flaws and the gruesome crime he commits. The painstakingly constructed portrait of a man in torment may get painted on a little too thickly at times, but Auteuil's descent from mixed-up family-man to lethal psychopath is gripping stuff.

It' sad, It's Hard but is a nice movie, some times is touching but the leit motiv of the film is how can a man act all his life pretending to be another completely different person, and anyone could notice anything, that's bizarre. That's were the movie lacks a reason or a mixture of thoughts to express to explain how could it be.

I must admit my French is a little rusty and I could have done with some subtitles so I was having trouble following the first half of the film on DVD. I borrowed it because I think Daniel Auteil is a good actor and had no idea what it was about except something about a man who lives a lie.

I watched it through to the end and recalled reading so many similar true stories in the last few years on cnn.com that I really got a shock by the end. As one of the scriptwriters comments in the extras on the French edition of the DVD says, "those scenes brought the film back into reality".

I found some of the editing a little jarring but perhaps that was intentional. It all makes sense in the end. Interestingly the producer - again, on the French edition of the DVD - said that she just wanted to follow the main character through his life without judging or diagnosing him, so perhaps those of you who know something about psychiatry will have a different perspective.

Stick with it, revel in the details of the film, and hug your family tightly afterwards.

This movie is adapted from a true story, the one of Jean-Claude Roman, a man who made his family and friends believe for 18 years that he was a searcher at the OAS when he didn't even had a job. For 18 long years, he had been crooking his parents and fooling his relations till he finally got discovered. He then killed his wife, children, mother and father. Revealing the end of this story won't bother the appreciation of this movie, since it's a well known news item in France that deeply moved the population in the 90's. As a matter of fact, the story is fascinating enough to make the script interesting and that is the main problem of the film. It relies almost essentially on the unbelievable destiny of Jean-Marc Faure and the performance of Daniel Auteuil, one the best French actors actors actually. His acting is sober and at some moments is approaching madness with convincing realism. But the staging and the whole ambiance remain cold and distant as if there was since the beginning a shift between Faure and the others. This creates an embarrassment that keep us from understanding him.

Anyway, it is worth seeing this movie, above all if you don't know the story yet. The only fact to know that this really happened makes you watch it with interest. Another movie was made upon this story, `L'emploi du temps' by Laurent Cantet.

This true story had already been told one year earlier, back in 2001, with L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS, a film that many viewers found less interesting than this one. Let me say that I don't agree at all. Both are outstanding films. Nicole Garcia's film and the Laurent Cantet's one. Here, Daniel Auteuil is purely awesome, but he is not alone, the whole result is engrossing, riveting, the perfect example of a flawless movie. Such a story has not been remade by the American film industry, at least as far as I know,, and that's very strange. I mean such a scheme has not been made before, but maybe I am wrong after all. A real must see. From a true story, I repeat. Chilling.