Hôtel des Amériques

Wow, did I have a bad night. I usually love French films and was excited to watch a DVD with two of Catherine Deneuve's films ("Le Sauvage" and "Hôtel des Amériques"). Amazingly, both of the films were among the least interesting films I have seen in some time--mostly because of the terrible writing. This is sad because one of the big reasons I usually prefer French films to recent Hollywood films is the writing, but in these two films they simply created characters that were hard to care about or understand.

Deneuve plays Hélène, a lady who obviously is in mourning for a dead lover. She can't get on with her life. However, when she meets Gilles (Patrick Dewaere), they become lovers--even though there really is absolutely no chemistry between them...none!

As for Gilles, he seems very moody and is good friends with a guy who loves to steal and beat up gay people. Now this could have been interesting, as this gay protest could have been an indication that Gilles and his male friend were lovers or harbored sexual feelings for each other. This may have turned off some viewers, but it really would have seemed plausible and interesting. Instead, however, you just assume that since Gilles likes such an evil man that he, too, is a jerk. And, through the course of the film, he does nothing to change that opinion. In fact, as the film progresses he gets moodier and moodier--until you are ready to shout at the screen for him to get over it and stop sulking and be a man!

Deneuve's character is rather interesting at first. The idea of her having all this emotional baggage and being constricted when it came to love was interesting. However, she is so distant and so moody that you wonder why Gilles puts up with her. Sure, he's pretty but this is the only thing he could see in her. Heck, their sex lives weren't even good...so why does he stay? And, why doesn't she either grow or simply reject him completely because she refuses to give in to love? Instead, she and the audience are stuck in limbo. While the movie is only 93 minutes long, it seems like a lifetime, as these two just exist and the relationship is stuck in neutral--and there is absolutely no coherent reason for them to be together in the first place or remain together.

Overall, impossible to believe and dull. I can think of many, many films Ms. Deneuve made that are better...and none, off the top of my head, that were worse.

This very fine film by one of France's great directors seems to be less seen than many others of his cinematic work. I am going to state frankly why. It deals with the ambiguity of relationships, and heterosexuals seem to prefer his films where they can identify with more ' family ' subject matter. Putting my neck out further I also consider this is his finest film, along with ' Quand on a 17 Ans ' ( Being 17 ). Both are somehow ' lost ' to popular audiences and the ambiguity of relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual are ingrained in both of them. In the latter a homosexual relationship is fought for, literally at times, and in ' Hotel des Ameriques ' both forms of sexuality struggle and fight to survive. The story has been related by other reviewers here, and I do not want to waste time in going over it. The film is set in Biarritz which in my opinion is a somewhat no man's land place, and two people superbly played by Catherine Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere ( a great loss to world cinema ) struggle to come to terms with their emotional and physical attraction. There is an undercurrent of bisexuality in Dewaere's character, and he is torn between her and his male friend who he seems to love as much as her. This battleground of feeling is fought out in transitory places; a lot in the hotel of the title, which in itself is struggling with change. The other places are an abandoned large house owned by Deneuve, and the apartment she is renting. Nowhere is ' home ' and the loss of place is as acute as the risk of failure in commitment to another person. As for the film itself it is classical in structure, and exquisitely filmed, and there is a scene in the hotel of the title which encapsulated the divisions of place and people. The hotel has been changed from its simplicity as an ordinary and friendly place to a more ' American ' style, and its quietly frightening opening party is set against a fake palm tree wall paper with the guests dancing to a waltz. The power of this scene is overwhelming and a stroke of genius on Techine's part. Two worlds collide here just like the worlds of the characters, and in the end we see coldly and honestly how fragile all of us are when it comes to overcoming repressed and dangerous feelings. The palm trees and the waltz show to me the disjunctions in life, and how false so-called ' romantic ' love can be. This film is filled with fear of loss, and the fight against depression. It has no optimism in the usual sense of the term, and in its way it rejects the fake American cinema of ' happy endings ' as much as it rejects the newly made over American style hotel. The waltz scene says it all and for those who like easy resolutions this film will not work, plus the fact that what we call heterosexual ' normality ' is questioned and undermined. An absolute masterpiece.

Gilles is sponging off his mother, who runs a small hotel in a French coastal city. When he meets Helene, she takes over the job of mothering him, even treating his minor wounds at the hospital one night when he gets into a fight. Gilles's other passionate relationship is with Bernard, a self-absorbed, mediocre singer-guitarist who can't stay out of trouble with the law. Bernard's true passion is probably for Luc, the gay man he beats up in a washroom.

It's beautifully made; sometimes I thought I was watching a Carne film with Michele Morgan instead of Catherine Deneuve. Bruno Nuytten was the cinematographer; there's no one better for moody night scenes. Philippe Sarde's music is full-blown romantic, sometimes too much so. Techine doesn't bother with character development through plot, he just assumes that whatever passes in front of his camera is telling the story. Those casino scenes go nowhere, and the effort to bring Helene's dead lover's architectural plans to life is wasted, since it's just another occasion for Gilles to look hangdog and helpless.

All in all, it left me wondering about Techine's willingness to engage the viewer in the film's material. I walked out of Barocco many years ago, and Soeurs Bronte left me pretty much cold, although I admired the acting. Hotel des Ameriques doesn't seem to be about anything, and the characters are cardboard.

Bigger than life this role for Patrick Dewaere who plays here the equivalent of what he was in real life, a depressed and depressing man, the portrait of so many people. I guess many audiences loved this movie, so close to real life. But that depends of what you seek when you go to the movies:: forgetting the daily problems - and in this case that's not the perfect topic for you - or, on the contrary recognize in a drama a part of yourself. I had never seen this film before, I ignored it. I regret it but am still happy to have - at long last - seen it. A drama in the pure French style, a plot which will never grow old.

At times during this film, I wondered if Téchiné had set out specifically to construct a world in which conventional gender expectations were turned upside down. I have appreciated across Téchiné's body of work a sense that, because heteronormativity is not assumed, alternatives to heteronormativity are, well, normalized. Although this analysis makes Téchiné's work sound didactic or agenda-driven, it is not. It's a breath of fresh air to spend time in a filmmaker's universe that doesn't adhere to gendered relationship conventions so commonplace and routine that we don't even notice or question them. When filmmakers construct a universe (in which some things exist and others do not exist), it is frequently the case that the only female characters who inhabit the constructed world are, on some level, concubines, whether outright prostitutes, objects of desire, wives, or girlfriends. In this common construction of the writer/director's film universe, the woman (or women) possess very few assets of worth: sex, youth, and beauty. The story, to the extent that it concerns the female characters, is about how women deploy their limited set of assets to attract male attention and the attendant benefit: material security. (In these constructed universes, women are uninteresting or irrelevant if they have the means to achieve material security without its being conferred as a consequence of their attachment to an entitled male character.) Given the popularity of this particular constructed universe in film stories, it's interesting to occasionally encounter film universes that deviate from this tired formula. Why is this conventional constructed film universe so popular? Perhaps because it caters to the a male fantasy of desirability as an extension of power? Téchiné's Hôtel des Amériques is so radical in its construction as to explore the possibility of a world in which expected roles are almost completely transposed. As a thought-experiment, it is fascinating and merits close watching.