Champagne amer

My review was written in November 1988 after watching the film on Vidmark video cassette.

This variously titled 1986 production filmed in Tunisia makes its belated bow direct-to-video as an engrossing period drama giving Julie Christie and Ben Gazzara rather oddball roles.

Julie's a saloon singer (with Liverpudlian accent when speaking) married to Gazzara, but both flee from their North African homestead in 1955 on the eve of independence. Gazzara's illegitimate son Wanis has a crush on Christie that's fortunately not consummated, even when as an adult (played by handsome star Patrick Bruel) Wanis meets up with her again in a nightclub.

Pic meanders with various metaphorical subplots, particularly young Wanis' preoccupation with cars (and Gazzara/Christie's vintage Buick) leading to an unexciting stock car chase. Supporting cast is dubbed while the leads speak direct-sound English in an unhappy mixture.

Cassette packaging credits direction to Henri Vari, who was production manager on the film, while Tunisian filmmaker Ridha Behi (whose "Les Anges" was a Directors Fortnight selection at the 1985 Cannes film fest) receives the proper credit on screen. Another oddity is that Christie's singing voice is dubbed in the jazz mode by no less than Chan Parker and Kim Parker.

Julie Christie and Ben Gazzara appear in this half-baked drama, directed by Ridha Behi, about the unraveling of French colonial rule in Tunisia. Gazzara plays a man who is involved romantically with a local nightclub singer named Betty Riviere (Christie). An Arab teenager (Patrick Bruel) who hangs around Gazzara's house and develops a crush on Christie is revealed to be Gazzara's illegitimate son from a tryst with a local Arab woman. As the teenager's attraction to the older white woman starts to get out of bounds the friction between the Tunisians and the French is also exploding. The tension builds – and there the film nosedives as if the production had suddenly run out of money and decided to wrap in mid-story. The ending seems hastily thrown together. Gazzara's and Christie's relationship goes nowhere. One can only guess that Behi was trying to explore how the breakup of North African colonial rule played out on the personal level, but one can only guess because what we see here is woefully inconclusive.

There is one interesting scene of Christie lip-synching "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It's probably the only time she has ever performed a song in a film other than the portion of the folk song "Bushes and Briars" which she sang with her own voice in Far from the Madding Crowd.

This failed film is worth seeing just to watch Christie and Gazzara together and dream of what might have been.