Un week-end sur deux

This premier effort from a beacon French actress, Nicole Garcia already shows where her author chose to go as regards her set of themes: family and problems that can reign in it. See also "le Fils Préféré" (1994) and especially the unsettling "l'Adversaire" (2002) with a mind-boggling Daniel Auteuil.

So, divorce and alternating custody of the children were to be privileged and the first originality of this "Week-End Sur Deux" is that here, it's a woman rather than a man who breaks the law to protract her stay with her children. Camille (Nathalie Baye) is an actress who devoted little time to her conjugal life with her husband Adrian (Miki Manojlovic) and so led to her separation with him and her children. When one week-end, she must go to Vichy for a new role, she has no other choice than to take her children with her. After a grievous telephone conversation during which her husband calls her an irresponsible, she cracks up and absconds with her children in a rented car towards Spain to attend a meteorite fall.

This rash impulse and Camille's headstrong attitude are an attempt from her to reconquer love and trust from her children, especially Antoine who has a hard time of the divorce. So, her mother begins to show interest in his likings, notably astronomy. The vivid portrait Nicole Garcia leaves of Camille underpins this unceremonious turn of events and is the backbone of the film. Garcia's edgy style serves the escape of a reckless mother who obey to her desires and who nearly loses her markers. See the sequence in the hotel when she thinks she has lost her bag. With this perspective, moments of suspense with the police, the customs or the rented cars agency subside to give way to a mercurial mother who wants to prove she can listen to her children's plight.

How will it end? Will her children and especially Antoine end up accepting her? And how will Adrian react? The answers are in this sensitive film.

I saw this film in New York City, at a matinee consisting of about eight people, based on a favorable review by Vincent Canby during his last days as the chief movie critic for the New York Times. It has stayed with me, and has often come to mind in the many years since then.

Nicole Garcia's direction is highly personal, highly indiosyncratic, with the texture and richness of real life and lived experience rather than the polish and technique of a film school graduate with a big studio budget. In a way, with its strong woman's point of view and its refusal to pander for audience approval of its characters' behavior, it might make for an interesting pairing with Allison Anders' independent American film, Gas, Food, Lodging (though the two films are in no way related in storyline, locale, socio-economic milieu, etc.).

Nathalie Baye is extraordinarily effective as the heroine on the verge of (or in the midst of) a spiritual breakdown. She can be rude and sullen, but strangely fascinating; she has a great drunk scene in which she blows a much-needed job; she's full of surprises and a far more interesting actress than the mediocre one she's playing in the film, as she drives on in search of an eclipse and ultimate redemption.

Though it is deliberately small in scale and proportioned accordingly, this film is well worth a look, both as a superb character study and as a choice acting vehicle for Ms. Baye.

The prior review is far more sophisticated than mine. I liked the film and certainly appreciate the style and honesty of it, both in the story and in the cinematography. The story is in fact quite a sad one in the genre of "spoiled brat gets comeuppance," or words to that effect. I'm not sure whether Camille is having a nervous or spiritual breakdown, but she is certainly running true to what we learn has been her past form. She suddenly has the idea that she can somehow reclaim her children, make up for her less-than-involved parenting during their prior years, and regain the assurance she wants that she's really not a bad person -- all by running away with them on one of the weekends they are "hers." Sadly, it doesn't work, and although the father doesn't seem to be any great shakes, either, it's the kids who will probably pay the price for their parents' relationship. One wants to be able to "like" Camille, but I fear it doesn't wash for me, from either a parenting viewpoint or a women's viewpoint. Yet it tells the tragedy very well and certainly must be commended for that. A well-done film.