Gentille

Just seen this at the London Film Festival. While Gentille does have its moments of genuine humour and gentle pathos, it feels like four or five films stitched together. The writer- director seems uncertain which of many possible stories she wants to tell and ends up developing none of them. Emmanuelle Devos works hard at turning her lead role into something meaty, but she is confounded by the film-maker's lack of conviction and apparent tentativeness over what the film is really about. Is it a mid-life crisis? A sex comedy? A study of intimacy - or of insanity? Well, it seems it's all these things and less.

Many of the characters come and go in piecemeal fashion, never properly introduced, abandoned almost as soon as they have entered the stage. The film's best bits put together might make an enjoyable short, but it wouldn't give the viewer any further insight into the main protagonist's mindset.

The result is a pleasant, harmless but ultimately dissatisfying and rather whimsical character study; like snacking on several entrées but not having a full meal.

In Sophie Fillières' amiably ditsy but very original comedy Gentille/ Good Girl, Fontaine Leglou (Emmanuelle Devos) is an anesthesiologist in a clinic that administers electroshock treatments, but when we first see her she is stolling on a Paris street and stopping a man she thinks is stalking her and then, when he denies it, inviting him for a drink. Later on her ramble she stops to have her face drawn by a street artist, but breaks off to have a warm conversation with a distinguished-looking man (Dr. Gudarzi -- Michel Vuillermoz, the king's elder son in Palais Royal!)—only after a few minutes they realize each has mistaken the other for somebody else.

Fontaine lives with Michel Strogoff, (Bruno Todeschini of Chéreau's powerful Son frère) a scientist specialized in the earth's techtonic crust, who wants to marry her and repeatedly plants a wedding ring where she will find it. She can't accept. She keeps appearing casually nude, once coming out of the shower when she tries on the ring Michel has put, this time, in the soap dish. Later he plants it in the yogurt when they're at his parents and she swallows it. Then when Michel is out of the room his father tells Fontaine a story about how for several years when he and mom had divorced, he freaked out and became an alcoholic bum in the neighborhood unnoticed by the family, successfully pretending he was on a construction project in Costa Rica. The father is played by Michael Lonsdale, and his mother is Bulle Ogier, insuring the parents French cinematic cult status. This "Costa Rica" bum story gives Fontaine and Michel's father a secret together. Another secret she has is she's flirting with several men, notably a patient at the clinic who's a doctor, Philippe (Lambert Wilson), who's under heavy medication and getting shock treatments, but seems if anything saner than most of the staff.

The line between sane and crazy, doctor and patient, faithful and unfaithful, serious and frivolous is constantly broached in Gentille, which seeks to rehabilitate the idea of a well-behaved girl while depicting its heroine's rather irregular lifestyle. Gentille isn't about events so much as it's about surprises, unexpected moments, and conversations. If you're in search of progression or structure this film may disappoint you; but if you're looking for charm, originality, wordplay, you're sure to be delighted. The music is ballet, by Delibes, with a touch of Brahms, and it buoys you up at just the right moments. Fillières' definitely has a voice and outlook of her own. She may not leave you with very much to remember other than some very good time spent with some extremely watchable actors. But isn't that usually enough? This film is the kind that's so close to pure style you may be able to watch it over and over where a more plot-driven movie would go stale, and on repeated viewings you may find meanings and grace notes you missed the first time.

Gentille was created for Emmanuelle Devos. American viewers may remember her as the vulnerable but strong-willed deaf lady who forms a strange liaison with a Vincent Cassel's petty gangster in Jacques Audiard's brilliant Read My Lips/Sur mes lèvres. She's also the main character in Desplechin's wildly inventive movie of last year, Kings and Queen/Rois et reine, has a powerful period role as the titular character of Frédéric Fontaine's La femme de Gilles, and is Niels Arestrup's girlfriend in The Beat My Heart Skipped/De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (Audiard again, and the Best Film César of 2006). In short, Devos is associated with some of the best of French cinema today. She's a world unto her self, a distinctly French and quite wonderful world. She is beautiful, but she is irregular. Her teeth aren't quite right. Her full lips tilt down in an odd way. Her big liquid eyes are indescribable, somehow both wounded and laughing. Her body is on the voluptuous side, but there's never a sense that she's posing or flirting. She's no Gina or Marilyn. Or Catherine. She's comfortable. But she's a great actress: she can be many people and always seem herself.

As Fontaine, Devos fits into Fillières' Bunuel-style surrealism by starting out looking more conventional and relaxed than in other recent roles. But in her relaxed way, she's quite unpredictable. There's a kind of liberation in her Hamlet-like indecision, her wavering over men. The final scene is unconventional and surreal, with Fontaine and Michel in space suits by North Face, but she has made the choice characteristic of classic comedy: to be with the man she loves – in Alaska, exploring the earth's mantle at 40 degrees below zero.

(Shown during the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema March 2006 at Lincoln Center, Gentille opened in Paris December 14, 2005.)

Emmanuelle Devos is a wonder to behold in Gentille, which is something of a wonder in itself. Some of the American reviewers of this film seem to have a problem in 'labelling' or 'placing' it -- there are, in other words, no common comedic 'markers' to roll audiences into the aisles.

The film is, in fact, very funny, and it's meant to be. It's all in the characters' posturing, glances and nuances, both tacit and spoken. If you don't pay attention, you'll be scatching in too many places.

Devos plays a doctor in a clinic, and the viewer is never really sure if she, like the always-brilliant Lambert Wilson (and just about everyone else in this film), is either flat-out nuts or well on the way. Characters are frequently asking: 'Don't I know you?'; 'What are you looking at?' or 'Do you see me?' They are always fearful of either being forgotten, or not being recognized, or being mistaken for someone else. Names and words become mangled (no one seems to know Wilson's full name, so he ends up being called Philippe Philippe). It's a film about identity and recognition, the nature of what is real and what isn't, and if we can ever really know each other.

This thematic motif is consistent throughout the film, yet American critics will miss it if they are looking for those familiar 'markers' that denote so many obvious American 'comedies'.

Maybe you have to be a true believer in French-style send-ups to really appreciate this gem. Everyone is off-centre here, and that's the way writer-director Sophie Fillieres wants us to view her world. I like her world, because to me it has a strong philosophical ring to it. The film is uniquely French or European in general: taking profound themes and somehow turning them into brilliant comedy, with nary a wacky chase or a pratfall in sight.

The 10 minutes with the marvelous Michael Lonsdale, playing a barely contained nutcase who may -- or may not be -- Devos's future father-in-law, is a masterwork of understated, classic comedic acting. Bandaged, bearded and bedraggled, he explains how he 'recovered' his place in the world, his 'dignity' if you will, after two years of begging on the streets while pretending to be in Costa Rica. His intensity while telling Devos that he watched his wife passing him every day and 'not seeing me' (that motif again) is worth the price of this DVD alone. The acting in this film is first-rate, much like the film itself.

I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.

Gentille is the second feature film from Sophie Fillières, who both wrote and directed. Fontaine Leglou (played by Emmanuelle Devos) is an anesthesiologist in a private clinic. She has a scientist boyfriend (Bruno Todeschini) who is constantly trying to figure out how to get her to accept his proposal of marriage. But Fontaine is a bit adrift in her life, moving through a series of slightly absurd situations. She finds herself drawn to a patient in the clinic, a doctor (Lambert Wilson) who has to be induced into narcosis, and he may help her to define what she actually wants out of life.

This film is definitely odd, from the characters to the situations they encounter. Fontaine is a little bit scatterbrained and eccentric, challenging a man in the street who she thinks is following her then inviting him for coffee, or her reaction to an engagement ring hidden in her yogurt. The characters were a little too offbeat and odd, rather than quirky, for me to be completely engaged, and the interaction between Fontaine and her patient seemed rather peripheral. Emmanuelle Devos was kind of interesting to watch, and it was nice seeing Lambert Wilson in a dramatic role rather than in a Hollywood blockbuster, but overall the film never really clicked with me.

This movie is simply the product of a genius. If you watch it in french without understanding it, if you don't like Beckett-like plots, if you don't like Paris, if you are looking for a-story-that-works this is not for you. This was the first film i saw by Sophie Fillières -avant prèmiere at the Cinémathéque francaise- and I bet she's to Paris what Allen is to Manhattan. It's too early to say, but i hope she won't deceive us. Dialogs are amazing, situations are paradoxical, even the soundtrack is exactly what it has to be (she said it was too expensive, but et the end she kept it). A smart comedy as you won't find a lot in Europe.