Les fantômes d'Ismaël

As many have said, the premise of this film is very good, but it is lost in a mess of structure that would shame must university film society. It is a number of stories within a story, which lose momentum as the film continues. The main plot is the sudden reappearance of a film maker's wife after an absence of 21 years, but this is submerged by unnecessary interludes.

I watched the film at the French Film Festival in Sydney, and throughout the film people trickled out, not returning. What kept me was the excellent acting as ever from Cotillard and Gainsbourg, but you honestly wonder why and how they signed up for such a messy screenplay.

If this film was a blind date, it would talk erratically at you for nearly two hours, then leave abruptly for no reason. Avoid.

Arnaud Desplechin does not make light movies. His characters seem to have been born and live permanently among dilemmas and crises, and the director's cinematic visions transport his viewers into the troubled worlds of his heroes. This is also the case with 'Les fantomes d' Ismaël', his 2017 film which takes a classic 'love triangle' formula to confront his heros with painful questions about the ages of love, about presence and absence in relationships, about reality, fantasy and nightmares in artistic creation. The result in this case is a quite chaotic film, but also full of essence, with a charm amplified by an exceptional cast.

The scene that opens the action in 'Les fantomes d' Ismaël' (although it is not the first scene of the film) seems to mirror the key scene in 'Sous le sable', the 2000 film by Francois Ozon. Both take place on a beach and are shot from similar angles, as if it were the same beach. In Francois Ozon's film, the manleaves his wife on the beach and goes swimming in the ocean. He will disappear and the rest of the film will be about the search for him. In Arnaud Desplechin's film, one of the heroines, Carlotta, aseems to appear from the sea, retracing the route in reverse. The woman is the 21-year-old missing wife of Ismaël, a screenwriter and film director. 'Les fantomes d' Ismaël' will be about the consequences of the absence and reappearance in the man's life of the woman who had left him suddenly and without trace or explanation long time before. After many years of waiting and searching, he had declared her officially missing. He had begun a new relationship with Sylvia, a shy astrophysicist, also past her prime youth. He had kept in touch with Henri, Carlotta's father, a Holocaust survivor and famous director. In the middle of creating a new film based on the figure of his brother Ivan - a diplomat and maybe a spy -, Ismaël sees his whole life called into question by the appearance of his missing wife, with his identity, biographical and sentimental landmarks overturned or annihilated.

The narrative style chosen by the screenwriters (including the director) is non-linear and creates the impression of intentional disorder. Looking closely, it seemed to me that it reflects the feelings of the main character, even if he does not appear in all scenes. At the beginning we look at a life that seems to have stabilized, with flashbacks that recall the trauma of the disappearance of the young wife 21 years ago, but also the episodes of meeting and beginning the relationship with Sylvia, that happened two years before. As the story progresses, and especially after Carlotta appears, events multiply and accelerate in the pace of the hero's experiences: memories, nightmares, creative crisis, images from the future film. The finale surprises with a total change of tone. Mathieu Amalric is probably one of the most suitable film actors to bring to the screen the image of a man in deep crisis, overwhelmed by the events of life. Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg are two of my favorite actresses and the joy of seeing them together (and even confronting each other) in the same film was immense. Two more secondary roles caught my attention, giving László Szabó and Hippolyte Girardot consistent creations despite their short screen time. To me, 'Les fantomes d' Ismaël' seems to be an unfairly little watched, discussed and appreciated film.

I suppose I'm lucky in the sense that unlike the other reviewers on here, I didn't pay to watch this film in a theater, but streamed it on Hulu. I approached it with high hopes since the title and brief synopsis seemed promising, but as the film went on I would get more and more disappointed. I thought the main character's film and his writing would just remain a side plot rather than eventually consume the whole thing. I was much more interested in learning about this long lost wife and his past relationship with her, but instead the movie just goes a million directions at once. We certainly learn about "les fantomes d'Ismaël" but are still left lost as to why they're there in the first place or why any of them matter more than the plot about the wife ?! Honestly this is a film that even pretentious hipsters won't have the right to say that they understood, because the film is a hot mess. Yes it may have some solid French talent in the cast, but their gifts went to waste due to a tangled storyline that never exactly gets detangled. I'm a fan of French films, but this one is just not good, sorry to say.

The basis for a good film is always a good screenplay. Because the screenplay of 'Les fantômes d'Ismaël' is a mess, the film is a failure. What is undoubtedly meant as an intelligent multi-layered story highlighting the many aspects in the life of a film maker, is in reality an incomprehensible hodgepodge of subplots going nowhere.

Right from the very beginning, the viewer is confused. The first few scenes are not scenes from the film we're watching, but from a film within the film, which is being shot by lead character Ismaël. The main plot item, however, is the return of his wife, who has been missing for 20 years and was presumed dead. This in itself can be fine material for a well-acted drama, exploring the way the husband, his girlfriend and his long lost wife cope with this new situation. With multiple award winning actresses like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard on hand, this would seem to be the most logical option.

Instead, the viewer is offered a myriad of increasingly complicated side-stories, flash backs and dream-like sequences, culminating in a laughable scene of the tormented film maker shooting his own executive producer by accident. I have no doubt this film tries to make a point, but I'm afraid only the director knows which one. Unless you're a fan of French pseudo-intellectual art-house dramas, this film is to be avoided.

I watched the whole film, but still have no idea what the story is about. The film starts off interesting, but becomes increasingly disjointed as time goes on. I cannot understand what it is about towards the end.