Les herbes folles

Well I don't know what it was about. Maybe there wasn't much going on. The wild grass must have symbolized something seeing as it kept cropping up all the time. The premise for the romance was interesting I suppose. There was a very playful element to the film, both in the form and the narrative. It's just an "art" film in the end. No excuses. Funny thing is, I really enjoyed it and couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Totally bizarre ending, which fit the film very nicely. I suppose it helps to come into the movie with low expectations. Don't get awed by the name Resnais (my god, but wasn't Last Year in Marienbad pointless? and compelling?). It's a fun little movie.

A surreal, madcap, on-again, off-again romance between a married 63-year old father of two and a middle-aged dentist and airline pilot is the subject of 87-year old French director Alain Resnais' latest film, Wild Grass. Based on Christian Gailly's novel, The Incident, from a screenplay by Laurent Herbiet and Alex Reval, Wild Grass treats its characters with respect and humor, yet the film, winner of the Jury Special Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, stands out more for the colorful cinematography by Eric Gautier and fine acting from Resnais' regulars Sabine Azéma and André Dussollier than for its puzzling narrative.

The couple, Marguerite Muir (Azéma) and Georges Palet (Dussollier), meet after Marguerite, out shopping for a new pair of shoes, has her purse stolen by a thief on roller blades and consequently loses her red wallet filled with money, credit cards, and identification papers. Georges, however, recovers Marguerite's lost wallet beneath the wheel of his car and returns it to the police. Interested in aviation and intrigued by a photo of the wallet's owner dressed in a pilot's outfit, Georges decides that he wants to meet her.

After the police inform Marguerite that her wallet has been turned in, she calls Georges to say thank you but he is expecting more and his longing for connection is not satisfied, beginning a pursuit that soon becomes an obsession. He sends her letters, leaves messages on her phone, and slashes her tires to keep her at home but she wants nothing to do with him. Ultimately he persists until she informs the police of the unwanted intrusion in her life. Typical of the screwball relationship, however, she suddenly begins to pursue Georges on her own, making visits to his house late at night and waiting for him in a café outside of a movie theatre where he is watching a favorite film from his childhood, The Bridges at Toko Ri. "You love me, then," Georges exclaims when he sees her for the first time.

Throughout it all, there is an underlying hint of danger with suggestions made about Georges' possibly violent past which outbursts of temper seem to underscore. Even so, everything is handled with a light touch and one never fears for Marguerite's safety and elements of danger or even horror are quickly replaced by rapid shots of romance and even snippets of musicals. Like other aged directors swan songs, Rohmer's The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, Bergman's Saraband, and Kurosawa's Madadayo, Resnais', in his latest work, continues to grow and experiment, although some may say that the styles of these octogenarian directors have basically remained consistent throughout their careers.

Far removed from the seriousness of his most famous films, Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, just when you think you have figured out Wild Grass, Resnais' whimsy keeps shifting into new territory and its bizarre twists and turns, fake endings, and character reversals will keep you off balance right up until the film's final frame. Like the wild grass in the title which grows where it is least expected, nothing is predictable in this playful but often too cutesy little film.

"After cinema, nothing surprises us." Narrator

In Wild Grass, Georges (Andre Dussollier) finds a wallet, finds the owner, Marguerite (Sabine Azema), and finds an odd connection with her and his inner self. I have no idea if I'm right in all of this—director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) has never been easy, but its obscurity seemed to tell me something about being human and quite a bit about wild-ass filmmaking by an 88 year old director who's throwing everything into the pot and hoping it comes out a tasty stew. What Georges is pursuing in Marguerite, an eccentric dentist, is part a romantic notion of his past as it may relate to the cinema and yet the painful recollection of past deeds too dark to articulate. That cinema is artificial is a leitmotif at least. His acceptance, her acceptance, and their recurring animosity reflect in relief the vicissitudes of love in all the sordid glory from cinema.

Even trips to the police for each of them are more like therapy sessions than the business of identifying the robbery victim (Marguerite) and thanking the finder (Georges). The same policeman, reacting with the incredulity that usually comes only from the audience, lends a surreal take on the strange antics of the principals. Resnais is at full force, even in his eighties, with symbolism from wild grass growing in concrete cracks, unusual feet and shoes, a stolen bag floating almost free, and aviation that like cinema floats free but not without its rules. He creates these images as motifs in order to make order of Georges' obsessions, which become erotic and dangerous even as he seems more lost in his dreams and cinema than ever before.

As George repeatedly backs into the protection of the door to the cinema, we can be quite sure Resnais is certifying the salutary and comforting embrace of film.

That dreamlike state, with the voice over so kindly parsing some of George's passions, is best expressed in the cinema, where Bridges at Toko-Ri makes solid the theme of lost friendship and the transforming of reality into our own visions.

I came to IMDb seeking solace after wasting several hours of my life on this film, which got a three-out-of-four-star rating by my satellite provider and sounded interesting. I typically enjoy foreign and independent films.

I'm not sure why I stuck it through to the end ... maybe because it seemed like something would happen to make sense of the idiotic plot line, or at least help me understand something about the nauseatingly unlikeable characters! Needless to say, that didn't happen Glad I checked out the reviews here afterward, which gave me a good laugh. I enjoyed hearing others say they wanted not only their money - but their time - back after wasting it on this film.

By the way, someone wrote that this premiered at the same festival as The White Ribbon. Watch that instead. It's also cryptic, but beautifully done, and you'll be on the edge of your seat for the entire film ... instead of wondering when to cut your losses and make your escape!

WILD GRASS (LES HERBES FOLLES) is based on the novel 'L'incident' by Christian Gailly, a writer who delights in taking simple incidents and pushing them to the extremes of climax beyond which few would ever dream. But Alain Resnais has taken this novel (adapted by Alex Reval and Laurent Herbiet), infused it with his own characteristic joy of playing reality versus imagination, memory versus illusion, and has come up with a film that will likely have a limited audience, but for those who delight in letting go and simply flying along with the imagination of a genius or two, then WILD GRASS will satisfy and more.

The story is a romance in the manner of a hesitation waltz. The story is narrated (by Edouard Baer) to give the opening aspects of the story momentum. Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azéma), a dentist and Spitfire pilot, has just purchased shoes and leaves the store when her handbag is snatched by a running thief. Later, the aging Georges Palet (André Dussollier) finds a red wallet in a parking lot, examines the contents, struggles with the burden of what to do, and finally turns the wallet in to the police, Bernard de Bordeaux (Mathieu Amalric) who takes his name in case there is a reward. Georges returns home to his wife Suzanne (Anne Consigny), who understands that Georges' strange behavior since his father's recent death may be enhanced by a new predicament: Georges is worried about the incident. He places telephone calls to Marguerite, visits her home, writers her letters - all of which confounds him as to his obsession with the woman he has never met. Georges family (he has two children) find his preoccupation strange and indeed Georges seems to have a dark secret from his past that causes him to have minor verbal explosions that seem wholly inappropriate. The incident becomes his life.

Meanwhile Marguerite shares her 'stalker' with her fellow dental assistant Josepha (Emmanuelle Devos) who attempts to manage Marguerite's change in behavior. Marguerite now is the one who needs to know more about Georges and stalks him. Ultimately Marguerite invites Georges to accompany her and her fellow pilots on a practice flight and a wildly entertaining practice flight game ensues: both Georges and Marguerite navigate the social protocols of giving and acknowledging appreciation and this bizarre catch as catch can romance comes to a Hollywood end - complete with flashbacks to old films etc. The audience is left to figure out just what has really happened - is this a wild love story on a collision course or is it simply a pair of fantasias played by two strange, emotionally isolated, and bored people, longing for life to perk up a bit?

Just as the title WILD GRASS suggests, little incidents (or invasions of wild grass into cracks and interstices quite by accident) can cause a butterfly effect and that is where the now 87 year old Resnais feels most at home. The irresistibly colorful cinematography is courtesy Eric Gautier and the perfect musical scoring is by Mark Snow. The danger in any kind of surrealism theme is that the audience becomes concerned that much of it doesn't make since. And so it is here, where even with the aid of the narrator there are many twists and turns that seem simply flights of fancy - and they probably are!

Grady Harp