Sunday, September 27, 2009

APRES LUI (2007)

Well, this film just disappointing the fuck out of me. The back of the box says something about a mother's 20-year-old son dying in a car wreck and then in her sorrow she develops a strange relationship with the son's best friend. To me that sounded really interesting and a great chance for the filmmakers to delve into some of the darker depths of human behavior. Catherine Deneuve is my favorite actresses and since she already had such success exploring human sexuality in films like BELLE DE JOUR and REPULSION among others, I naively though that maybe in a film with such a powerful subject (grief and sexuality) she would give a ground shattering performance. I was wrong.

Denevue's performance is good, nothing more, but the story is dead in the water right from the beginning. The son is never properly introduced, except in a brief scene as a annoying dork and then he's dead.  Bam! Eight minutes into the film he's croaked on over to the other side and I feel nothing at all. Deneuve quickly takes interest in the friend and turns him into her pet project: giving him a job and getting him back in school.  Soon she starts with the stalking, the touching and the acting like a crazy person, but not crazy enough to make it interesting. Other boring stuff happens but it's all unimportant and the entire film just drags along like a two-legged turtle until the disappointing ending.

Unless you're just a hardcore Deneuve fan then I cannot think of any reason to watch this film.