Sibyl

I can't recall seeing a film with so many good and great elements: cinematography, acting, a good deal of great dialogue, that was assembled into such a let down of total experience. It is like observing a kid who is smart, has everything, goes to he best schools -- yet goes nowhere in life.

I don't know where this project went wrong. Was it deep flaws from the beginning and they went ahead without resolving them, or was it some kind of creative fight in post production, perhaps about comedy vs drama as the goal in editing?

This film kept me in its grip, and I enjoyed every twist and turn as the plotlines unfolded. The acting was superb and the main characters were complex, compelling and elusive.

I'm quite surprised to see such low ratings, but to each their own! To me, the film's seemingly disparate elements/themes (e.g. Trauma, depression, addiction, grief/loss, desire, deception, vanity, power, exploitation) came together to paint a beautifully absurd portrait of the human condition.

In particular, the film seems to emphasize the ways that we naively cling to earthly vices/pleasures and deceptive/delusional narratives in our fights against feelings of disillusionment, meaninglessness and hopelessness.

The trailer was classically misleading. I did not expect a pale remake of Providence (1977) directed by Alain Resnais.

In short: 1) Sibyl has a few undisclosed skeletons in the closet and manages them while drinking abusively. 2) Sibyl is a shrink and the border between her private life and her professional life does not exist. 3) Sibyl is a writer and she draws inspiration from her own surroundings. Thus, given these three points, fiction and reality are quickly confused, for Sibyl first and for the audience even more.

Although the actresses Sandra Hüller and Adèle Exarchopoulos are outstanding, this story of a lost woman suffering of emotional distress is globally boring.

This movie is much more confusing than it needed to be which makes the immersion in the story very challenging at the start without any big payoff for the effort. It's just a way to try and make the movie seem more interesting than in reality is. Well shot and acted.

I was somewhat skeptical before entering the theater, thinking it would turn out to be another boring film about white people surrendering themselves to hordes of therapists, french woman suffering from romantic distress and so on. However, the writer/director cleverly managed to create a layered portrayal of the protagonist shrink and the world she lives in - blending in her present life, her past, the fiction novel she's writing and the movie her patient stars in. The script is mature, quirky and unpredictable enough to handle these four layers without becoming pointless and confusing. The performances are stellar, especially of Sandra Huller as the temperamental film director.

There is no dearth of past french films handling similar material. Yet somehow this film appears fresh and profusely entertaining.