La petite Lili

This adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull starts out promising enough with a good ensemble cast, great art direction and interesting relationships between all the characters, but then it just peters out, especially the final film-production sequence which has absolutely nothing to say. A fair film.

Except for the character played by Jean-Pierre Marielle everyone involved here has to cope with a cut-and-dried characterization. Sure, there are only good actors but how do you explain that the best role seems to be the one of an aging supporting character with his views on life and mostly tired of arguing with (younger) people?

A flat movie hence, where you see the script for the characters, not the flesh. Not too boring though: there's always a little something that keeps you hoping for something to happen. Then comes the second part: 'Jumping o'er times'. Totally hopeless, with a camera that has strictly nothing to say.

At least actors did their best.

"La Petite Lili" is a delightful, visually enticing reinterpretation of Chekhov's "The Seagull" through a very Gallic sensibility, similar to how "Clueless" updated and Americanized Austen's "Emma."

While retaining most of the original dialogue and plot as a droll commentary on the more things change the more they stay the same, co-writer/director Claude Miller cleverly updates the artistic medium of debate from literature to film and uses his visual powers to very sensually illustrate the sub-text that in most productions is stifled under 19th century Russian costumes.

Because for all the high falultin' talk of aesthetics and generational conflict, and intellectual art vs. commercial pandering, lust is the primary motivator. Essentially, all the men are led around by their genitals and the women are empowered by controlling them (and it was suspenseful as to which of the competing women would succeed at it for the long run as to whether any of the men could remain faithful to them). For all their intellectual pretensions, all the characters are ruled by their emotions.

Miller wonderfully sets us up for the hot indolence of a country home weekend with a nude nubile Ludivine Sagnier, triggering a much more more effective mise en scene than Bernardo Bertolucci did in "Stealing Beauty." The effect Sagnier has on all the gathered extended family members is palpable and her brazen manipulations are consistent through to the ironic conclusion.

I thought through most of the movie that the director was possibly unaware of just how equally visually mesmerizing her counterpart Robinson Stévenin is on screen, as only one character responds to him, until I saw that James Dean is thanked in the acknowledgments and realized that Miller was using this brooding hunk as an archetype as well (his one final smile is almost a shock).

The last act is a culminating commentary on Chekhov's jarring denouement, claiming that "this is how it should have turned out." Miller softens some of the punishing sexism of the original while putting together a film-within-a-film like Hamlet's play-within-a-play that revenges on the ex-girlfriend, the mother, the mother's lover, etc. full of both comedy and tension.

The sub-titles are many times white on white for difficult reading.

I'm still trying to figure out what it is about the French and Classic texts. They love 'fixing' them when they ain't broke as much as they seem to love the originals. In the last five years I've seen on the Paris stage productions of 'Un Tramway nomme Desir' in which the 'flowers for the dead' reference was moved from the beginning to the end; where Blanche and Mitch not only went on a date but were SHOWN in a jazz club complete with a full-length blues performed by a Black singer (not in any production I've ever seen) and, to cap it all, the nurse who accompanies the doctor in the final scene was played by an obvious transvestite wearing drag ('she' was listed as a man in the program) who arm-wrestles Blanche to the floor. This was followed a couple of years later by 'The Glass Menagerie' which begins with a Prologue in which Tom and The Gentleman Caller perform a soft-shoe to Jack Teagarden's recording of 'I'm Confessing'. In the original play the Gentleman Caller appears only at the end but what does Tennessee Williams know. Chekhov gets the same treatment. La Petite Lili is a take on 'The Seagull' and last year I fought to get tickets for an acclaimed production starring a great French actress, Irene Jacob, as Nina. I was slightly bemused BEFORE the play started when the management appeared to play EVERY recording of 'Over The Rainbow' in existence. Then the play began - with Masha performing a raunchy version of 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction' punctuated by swigs from a can of lager (neither the song nor canned beer was available in 19904). Call me square and old fashioned but I prefer the opening line that Chekhov wrote for Masha 'I'm in mourning for my life'. As if that weren't enough from time to time the proceedings ground to a halt as the ensemble broke into 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'. But why am I telling you all this? Because now Claude Miller has put his two cents worth in, updating the story to take account of film and video technology and changing the character's names although leaving their actual roles the same. There's some nice moody photography but when the oldest character on the Lot, the superb Jean Paul Marielle, runs, not walks away with the movie something is badly wrong. All things being equal this should be Nina's movie but given that they cast the ubiquitous Ludivine Sagnier (again at the expense of the far superior Virginie Ledoyan) who is rapidly cornering the market in overripe sexy sluts (think Jennifer Jones in 'Gone to Earth', 'Duel In The Sun', etc), and clearly has her eyes on the gap left by Vanessa Paradis, this was never going to happen. If only someone would get hip that's it's not enough to look as though you go through life wearing slightly soiled underwear and are happy to flaunt your dubious charms and play sex scenes, you also have to be able to ACT, then maybe Sagnier could settle for a career in the French equivalent of the 'Carry On' series and leave the acting to Ledoyan. On the plus side this film is worth seeing if only for a handful of scenes at the end in which Marielle comes face to face on a movie set with Michel Piccoli, playing Marielle on film (don't ask). It seems that when Claude Miller is killing waterfowls he leaves no tern unstoned.

This story is derived from a story by Chekov (not the Star Trek one, by the way) and the movie was very, very, very "talky". And while the quality of the film's production is there (this is why it earns a 5--for acting, direction and cinematography that are just fine), the story itself just seemed dull and lethargic. Plus, I found I really didn't like anyone--the title character seemed like a direction-less nymph, her boyfriend an insufferable "artist" who just needed to grow up, and the rest of the family just seemed like a bunch of phonies I felt no connection to in any way. And everyone just seemed to talk and talk and argue and then talk again! About the only thing going for this film to lift if above mediocrity is the very nude body of the title character in the first minutes of the film--this was tough not to notice (and this makes this movie inappropriate for kids, as well).