Et après

Interesting idea. The charm of Malkovich. And the delicate silhouette of Romain Duris. A movie as old question. About life, love and essence of every day.About death and expectations. About truth and believes. The taller is not very inspired. The words are dust, the nuances are broken mirrors, the lights are only grills of evening.It is a good movie but the taste is not sensational. All is known and the first expectation dies in short time.Nothing is fake, ugly or boring. But the pieces of others movies makes a rusty picture. All seems reheated food. Good intentions are contours of truism. The end is twilight of a promise. A great promise. But it is not very bad; every reminder is a lesson. About the story, evenings , life and hope.

I liked the movie and John Malkovich's performance. He enunciated every word carefully in contrast with the French actor whose accent is so thick many times one does not understand what on earth he is saying. The accent is not all. He also mumbles and whispers. Very unappealing, comes across as an arrogant little man. Immature and angry in one scene cannot control his anger and as a spoiled brat starts to destroy a bunch of decorative pieces in his house. Many other reviewers did not find this actor effective. I could not stand him.

The theme of the movie that one must reconcile and prepare for death before dying is interesting. I liked the supernatural aspects. True, none of us knows the day or the hour.

Sometimes the promotional department of a film causes people to not view a film because it is misrepresented by the graphics on the poster, the DVD cover, or the trailer. Such is the case with AFTERWARDS - a lovely exploration of the concept of death and dying philosophy that has nothing to do with the image of John Malkovich holding a smoking gun! And that is a shame: this is a film that has a lot to say and provides a lot to think about thanks to the writing, directing and acting. The story is adapted from the novel "Et Après..." by Guillaume Musso by Michel Spinosa and writer/director Gilles Bourdos. It is a complex story that thankfully due to the talent of the cast and director is able to carry the audience into a place perhaps not considered or discovered before. It is a thinking person's film and a rewarding one.

The film opens in an idyllic setting of a lake of water lilies where we observe a little French boy Nathan and an English speaking girl Claire gently admiring swans(interesting to note that swans are traditionally or mythically associated with death). The girl slips on the dock, is trapped, and sends the boy to find her parents. The boy runs to the highway where he becomes the victim of a tragic hit and run accident. The film then jumps ahead about twenty years and we discover Nathan (Romain Duris) as a successful New York lawyer living alone after his marriage to Claire (Evangeline Lilly) has ended after the crib death of their son, leaving Claire to manage alone in New Mexico with the couple's surviving daughter: Nathan cannot cope with the fact that he feels responsible for the son's death by not responding to his cries. A strange doctor, Dr. Kay (John Malkovich) appears in Nathan's life claiming that he is able to sense death before it happens: he works in a hospital for the terminally ill, among them is one young lad Jeremy (Reece Thompson) with cardiac carcinoma who is struggling with his incipient dying. Dr. Kay is not malevolent, he is simply a 'Messenger' - one given the ability to visualize a bright white halo around a person who is soon to die. Nathan will not consider the veracity of this obtuse thought until Dr. Kay suggests he visit an old friend Anna (Pascale Bussières) who now works in a diner, living with her Russian father and her son. Nathan is curious, meets Anna, and upon visiting her home witnesses the death of Anna's father. Nathan contacts Dr. Kay, hostile that Dr Kay had suggested Anna was to die but instead lost her father, and Dr Kay reassures Nathan of the process: soon Anna dies also. At this point Dr Kay shares Nathan's history: Nathan did not die in the hit and run accident many years ago and was attended by Dr Kay who then knew that Nathan was also a Messenger. How Nathan turns his life around to flee to New Mexico and join Claire is the transformation of the film.

This is a delicate story told with sincerity and lack of sensationalism. It is a journey into the philosophy of what happens to us as we die. Nathan explains this to is daughter as death being like a ship that sails to the horizon and disappears to our eyes, yet the ship sails on beyond our scope of vision into another unknown space. Director Gilles Bourdos handles the pacing of this visually stunning film with such grace that it becomes a gentle work, allowing the finest acting yet seen from Malkovich, and reminds us of just how fine an actor Romain Duris has become. This is also a lovely introduction of Evangeline Lilly, an actress with tremendous screen presence and acting ability. Forget the trailer and the ugly cover of this DVD and allow yourself to enjoy this mesmerizingly beautiful film.

Grady Harp

When somebody makes a movie about death which suggests survival and features a medical specialist in a lead, you expect something serious. But this film's purported profundity is only mock-profundity, and no deep thought has gone into this at all. It is just a 'deathsploitation film'. After all, everybody is interested in death, just as they are interested in sex, so why not exploit the genre? You offer the audience a little hope on a platter, cover heavily with a dark and mysterious sauce, and serve. Somebody thought of getting John Malkovich to look eerie and as if he were possessed of arcane knowledge. That was supposed to get everybody going. Malkovich is always good, but he does need a bit of direction now and then, if only to know which way to look and why. But this film is chiefly ruined by the French actor Romain Duris, who plays Nathan, the central character. The reason why he ruins it is that he has two speech impediments as an actor. First of all, his accent is so unreasonably thick and impenetrable that with the best will in the world, one cannot make out much of what he is supposed to be saying in English. (Some serious speech coaching could have cured this!) But even worse than that is his infuriating habit of speaking all of his lines in a deathly whisper. This means that about half of his lines are frankly inaudible, no matter what the sound man tries to do to enhance them. This affectation has spread like a virus amongst certain vain male actors, who all genuinely believe that if they lower their voices to the point where you have to lean forward and strain to hear them at all, they are so much sexier and more fascinating. ('It sucks them in,' I have heard some of them say about the audiences who cannot hear them properly.) Just because Marlon Brando got away with it does not mean that anybody else can. In any case, with Brando it was not an affectation. Having met and talked with him, I can assure everybody that he had an astonishingly weak voice and did not talk like that just to call attention to himself, as so many actors imagine. I have stood right next to him and had to lean forward to strain to hear him despite the fact that he was trying earnestly to make himself understood. (We were discussing the American Indians, a mutual passion we had.) So when people like Duris think they are being Brando, they have got it all wrong! Therefore, however good or bad the film was to be, casting an unrestrained whisperer in the lead automatically condemned this film to failure. A film in which the lead actor cannot be heard might as well not be made. John Malkovich has never made the mistake of failing to articulate every word he has ever spoken in a film, as he is a serious professional. Duris should have his vain little beard shaved off in public, made to recant, and then be publicly spanked by his mother as a bad, bad boy. After all, somebody had to invest money in this thing, and he ruined it. The film is based upon a novel by Guillaume Musso entitled 'Et Après ..' Who knows whether it was good or not? The director co-scripted the film. He is Gilles Bourdos. I have not seen his two previous features. But I should say that his script was unfocused and ineffective and he failed to control Duris, so he struck out, despite the fact that there is nothing particularly wrong with his direction in general. This was a French production made in English in America. There really should be many more of those, and every time one fails like this, it sets back all the others.

In New York, the French Nathan (Romain Duris) is a successful lawyer divorced from Claire (Evangeline Lilly) and with a little daughter. One day, he meets the mysterious head of the department of the Saint Louis Clinic Dr. Kay (John Malkovich) in his office and the man shows that he knows details of his life. Dr. Kay discloses that he can foretell people's death and he proves to Nathan that he is not a fraud. Nathan is assigned by Dr. Kay to give comfort to those that will die soon. Further, he discovers that his fate is also to be a Messenger.

"Afterwards" is a low-paced drama with a beautiful cinematography about people that has the ability to know when people will die. The unexpected scene in the beginning is very impressive but the screenplay is confused, using many flashbacks but without explanation of the whole scenario. Nevertheless, it discloses in a sensitive way the life and tragedies of the tough lawyer Nathan. John Malkovich is excellent as usual; the gorgeous Evangeline Lilly has also a good performance; but Romain Duris is miscast since he is absolutely non-charismatic with his arrogant expression. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Depois de Partir" ("After the Departure")