* * 1/2 (TWO AND A HALF STARS)
Starring: Sabine Az?ma, Pierre Arditi, Mathieu Amalric, Lambert Wilson, Anne Consigny, Michel Piccoli.
Playing at: Beaubien and Quartier Latin cinemas.
Parents? guide: For all.
I feel bad about saying it, but I didn?t get that much pleasure out of Alain Resnais?s Vous n?avez encore rien vu.
I?m not usually shy about grumbling about what I don?t like on the big screen, but there are a couple of reasons why I?m loath to complain too loudly about M. Resnais.
For one thing, he?s 90-years-old. I mean, c?mon. This film was in competition this past spring at the Cannes Film Festival and the tireless director is currently preparing a new feature, Aimer, boire et chanter, adapted from Alan Ayckbourn?s play Life of Riley, the third Resnais picture based on Ayckbourn?s work.
If anyone is still directing major feature films at 90, a fairly obvious gut reaction is to cut the veteran a little slack.
And the world of cinema is a better place because Resnais is still making movies. He remains best known for the 1959 classic Hiroshima mon amour, but his much more recent films are always worth a gander: Les herbes folles two years ago was a quirky charmer and Coeurs from 2007 was a mighty engrossing drama.
So let?s start with the positives in Vous n?avez encore rien vu. It features a phenomenal cast, many of whom have worked with Resnais over the years. They?re all very good, notably long-time Resnais regular Sabine Az?ma, Pierre Arditi, Mathieu Amalric and Lambert Wilson.
And the film is a thoughtful piece about the relationship between art and life, about the ties that bind those that work together in the theatre. But all that cannot save this film from being a kind of cold, dry piece. It?s built around a great idea, but in the end, you only care a little bit about the main characters and even less about the play-within-the-film.
The cool starting point is that playwright Antoine d?Anthac (Denis Podalyd?s), who has just died, has left precise instructions that all his old actor pals must make the trek to his ostentatious mansion to discover the contents of his last testament. It turns out that the demanding writer wants the gang to watch a video of a performance by a young troupe of one of his most famous plays, Eurydice. The neat twist is that all of his friends have acted in the play at different times, and as the drama unfolds on the big screen at d?Anthac?s house, most of them start acting out their parts.
The actors play themselves in the film, adding to the nudge-nudge, wink-wink feel here.
The biggest problem is that it?s very tough to really engage with the story of Eurydice and Orph?e in the play. Resnais impresses with his ability to segue from scene to scene, from play to life outside the play, but the end result is more of an impressive cinematic construction than a living, breathing film that has any chance of moving us.
bkelly@brendanshowbiz
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