O Declínio dos Homens

This film is full of interesting ideas. Some scenes are truly hilarious. The dialogs are witty and colloquial. The tension in the film comes not so much from the 'murder mystery' plot as from the relationship between the characters. The film tells two stories in parallel.

The first story involves the characters played by Trintignant and Kassovitz. Trintignant is an ageing drifter, with a somewhat ridiculous macho toughness, who is followed by a naive young man played by Kassovitz with plenty of good-natured smiles. Many good moments in the film come from the contrast between the two characters, for example when Trintignant tries to teach Kassovitz how to be intimidating.

The second story tells how a salesman,played by Jean Yanne, gives up his job and his wife to find the murderer of a young friend. Yanne plays the part with a kind of aggressive irony. I wish I could describe this better.

After a while the viewer understands how both stories are connected and they meet indeed in the end, in a surprising but also logical ending.

The film is a successful mixture of the witty but superficial gangster films the director's father (the celebrated Michel Audiard) used to write, and the "typical french film" with lots of psychological depth and lots of care in the display of emotions.

This noir character study uses the plot only as a vehicle to explore its protagonists' world. Although it's an honest attempt and the actors do very well (Trintignant is a personal favorite anyway), the pace is too slow and tiring and the lack of action sometimes becomes evident. Sometimes words cannot generate interest by themselves.

While it doesn't all 'work', this is a more interesting partial failure than most people's complete successes.

An oddball mix of thriller, character study and very quirky comedy. It follows two parallel stories that finally intersect.

a) The unlikely, ultimately homo-erotic friendship between a small time con-man/drifter (Jean- Louis Trintignant), and the semi-retarded wanderer he meets on the road (Mathieu Kassovitz).

and b) a man's mid-life crisis when a cop friend is shot and left brain dead, leading him to give up everything, work, marriage, to try and find meaning in his life by finding the killers.

There are leaps of logic, but some very nice character moments as well. I liked it even better on 2nd viewing.

Two veteran stars bring weight to this grimy little drama with an unusual flashback structure - along with laconic captions - which despite the gorgeous Bulle Ogier appearing fleetingly as Jean Yanne's wife has strongly if unresolved homoerotic overtones.

Yanne, who serves as the film's weary cornerstone, sports a scruffy beard that makes him resemble Akim Tamiroff, who wouldn't have been at all out of place in the grungy urban hell director Jacques Audiard makes of modern Paris.

The very structure of the movie was original.Two apparently distinct plots .

One concerns two guys:Jean Yanne and his friend Mickey who has just been very seriously injured (gangland killing?).He is lying brain dead in a gloomy hospital and his friend keeps on talking to him.

The other one concerns two other guys:Trintignant and Kassovitz.The former spends most of his time with women -although the film has gay accents - ,the latter is a half-wit who has never sex and seems to be the pain in the neck for his mate.

This is par excellence the kind of movie the French critics love: a vague ambiguous screenplay,"deep " "meaningful" frames of mind and even pieces of information in the silent movies tradition.This is also par excellence the kind of movie which makes lots of people take to their heels when they hear about French movies.

Assets: All that concerns the first two guys is in the present tense.The adventures of the two others are a long flashback.Jean Yanne gives a strong performance as a jaded desperate man who's lost his last reason to live.On the other hand ,Trintignant overacts and,for the first time in his brilliant career ,is almost unbearable.

More pretentious than really exciting.