Les bien-aimés- the good news and bad news

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/16/12 at 11:42am

I saw a screening of this at BAM two nights ago and wanted to share some thoughts.

The good news is on paper this sounds perfect. Catherine Deneuve in a new MUSICAL(!!!) that is supposed to pay homage to her 60s musicals with Jacques Demy- What could be better?

I'm a crazy Deneuve fan, and even trying to be as objective as possible I have to say she delivers whenever on screen, which is far too little. The set-up is like the Grey Gardens musical. During the first half of the movie Chiara Mastroianni (daughter of two of most beautiful people ever caught on film- Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni) plays mother to a young daughter and in the second half Mastroianni becomes the adult daughter and Deneuve plays her aged mother.

The first and second halves have almost nothing to do with each other, thematically or stylistically. The first wants to be Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, but doesn't have the score to support it. In some long shots Mastroianni looks startling like her mother, but most of the time it just makes you long for the real thing. The songs, especially in this section, seem to halt the movie in its tracks.

The second half tackles WAY too many issues and seems such a disconnect from what was going on before. New characters are introduced that take over the film, and make the 130 minute run time seem a lot longer.

SPOILERS***************
In the second half Mastroianni falls in love with a gay American while on a trip to London. He admits he is HIV positive and wants to end their weird platonic love affair. She goes to visit him in New York on September 11th, but gets stuck in Montreal. He gets out of the city with his boyfriend and they meet up. She tells him he wants to have a child with him; she doesn't care about the HIV. She'll take the risk that her and/or the baby won't be infected. They end up having a threesome, after which she steals his HIV meds and commits suicide by overdose while watching the news of the planes flying into the towers. And this is just ONE of the subplots- and there are songs during all of this too!
END SPOILERS***********

Even with all of this crazy mess Deneuve is enchanting and makes her limited scenes in the second half worth the price. The should have either stuck to the homage in the first half or just made a modern musical out of the second half. It was like a 5 part mini-series crammed into two hours of movie.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 8/16/12 at 7:33pm

Thank you, despite your reservations it still sounds well worth seeing. I so love Catherine Deneuve.