Le chignon d'Olga

Hubert Benhamdine has a distinctive presence in this rather inconsequential film but promising though his performance is it did not save the film from teetering on the edge of boredom. He plays Julien, a young man who becomes attracted to a young woman in a French provincial bookshop, Olga, and as the poster tells us she has a chignon. End of Olga more or less, which was a pity as I would have probably found her life more interesting than Julien's family. There is also a tedious repetition of a Charlie Chaplin film which probably meant to show the pratfalls of life, and in this film there are plenty of them and none produced a smile on my face. Rohmer has been mentioned but I am afraid that is as misleading as the title of the film. Rohmer would have observed more lightly his characters, and this film does not. It maybe me as others seem to find its charm. I saw it years ago, forgot it and watched it again, and probably it will be forgotten again. I will miss Olga though and the opening promised something it did not deliver.

This is a typically French film - inconsequential, gloomy, and yet somehow beautiful. It is a tale of lost people coping with loss and searching for love in the South French countryside. The characters are just ordinary people: smoking, working, and wondering what to do with their lives.

If you are looking for a riveting storyline with a beginning, a middle, and an end; or if you want to be thrilled by action, or floored by humour, do not watch this film. But if you want to see a lucid and touching account of ordinary lives, and the questions we all ask of ourselves, you won't regret seeking it here.

This is a remarkably fresh, charming, and genuine work by a director, Jerome Bonnell, who was only 23 at the time. Whatever mastery of cinema craft he may have lacked then, he more than made up for in his ability to wring the most amazing performances from extremely young actors and actresses. The most staggeringly brilliant performance in the film is by Nathalie Boutefeu, as the character Alice. Boutefeu passes through a bewildering range of shifting emotions and moods with the scintillation of sunbeams on water. It is one of the most remarkable performances of someone of that age which I have ever seen. There seems to have been a deep resonance between her and the director to give her the confidence to expose herself so completely to the camera, holding back nothing. Not surprisingly, Bonnell has gone on to make two further films with her. Who wouldn't? Another amazing performance is that given by Florence Loiret as Emma, whose moods shift almost as violently, as she grieves for her deceased mother, wants to leave her father but cannot, almost has an affair with her lesbian friend but cannot, almost cries but laughs, almost laughs but cries, and so on. None of this is in the slightest bit contrived, because this is how people of that age mostly are, and who better to direct them in a film than someone of the same age who may even be that way himself, for all we know? All of the performances are excellent. One especially charming and delightful minor performance is that delivered by the little boy, Antoine Goldet. It is a pity he has not appeared in another film. He was inspired casting. This is a film which is languid and lingering, dwelling on the faces of the characters without concern for the need to rush off and look at another character. The emotional tangles and knots, the 'presence of the absence' of the dead mother which is palpable and felt at all times in her household, the quarreling and the disputes, the making-up, the alienation, and the coming-together, the love both spoken and unspoken, the heartbreak, all of these are magnificently conveyed in this artless and natural movie, which gives the impression of having been thrown over someone's shoulder like a girl's handbag, so effortless does it all seem. It's easy for some!

Julien and Emma have lost their mother a year ago and live with their father. He is in love with the beautiful Olga who works in a bookstore. Too shy to approach her he dreams of caressing her and even gets a friend to assist in an elaborate (and rather amusing) subterfuge to win her. The characters try to rebuild themselves through a series of mistakes where the nuances of everyday language and gesture is misunderstood and moral high grounds challenged. A beautiful, subtle and altogether charming and delightful film.

'Le Chignon d'Olga' is a film about the lives and loves of an affluent, liberal family. As with many French films, the characters exude a natural sexiness (in a way that is not seen in most Hollywood movies), and the acting, and the detail of the script, are both good. But the film made me feel a little old - viewed from a certain perspective, there's an inconsequentiality about these teenage affairs and while the plot operates in the context of a deeper story (the recent death of the children's mother) the treatment of this is muted. But if it's a slight tale, it also feels true, and lead actress Nathalie Boutefeu has a lovely, interesting face that director James Bonnell makes good use of.