Guy

"Guy" is a fictitious version of "l'air de rien" (the fact that the singer would be the illegitimate father of the journalist is only anecdotal,and is insignificant in the film) which was the portrait of a real aging singer ,Michel Delpech .In 'Guy'" the surname of the star who never was, "Jamet " (a homonym of the French word "jamais"=never) ,is revealing .

In "l'air de rien" ,Michel Delpech appeared as a man who had found peace of mind ;he did not seem to play a part ,he acted naturally ,and most of the time ,his scenes looked more "cinema vérité" than a fictionalized story of a has- been .

Hence the paradox in "Guy" : Alex Lutz the actor/director tries desperately to sound "cinema-verite" ,but it's only a movie, and it can never hold a candle to a real-life career:the fact that Michel Delpech should pass away , shortly after the movie was made, makes "L'Air De rien" all the more poignant.

Playing on nostalgia at top speed,Lutz even featured sixties pop singer Dani as a former singer ;but in real life ,she was only a footnote in the sixties, her career never approaching those of the four top girls of the era.Nevertheless ,her duet with Lutz on "Da-di-da",a pleasant pop song, in parallel with another duet they performed some twenty years before ,climaxes the movie which also features Julien Clerc ,an artist whose career is still buoyant .

The film is essentially some kind of interminable interview interspersed with songs ;the first half hold one's attention,dealing with nostalgia, the hard situation of a has-been ;but in the long run, it becomes repetitive and shows Lutz's tendency to hog the stage ;the final lines ,for instance,are pretentious and are little more than fortune cookie philosophies.

This movie is filmed as a false documentary by a son wanting to meet his real father, a past popular singer. With Alex Lutz behind the camera, but also in front - 40 years older than he really is - it is almost a one-man show, accentuated by the fact that the other main protagonist is almost never shown, as he's the one holding the camera.

The beginning amounts to nothing special. That plus the concert part made me almost dropped the movie but finally, the masks are dropped and the film begins to reach some truthfulness. These scenes remains however scarse, which explains my rating.