Audrey Tautou

  • L’odyssée (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) At first glance, the idea of a warts-and-all biography of French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau seems both essential and redundant: Cousteau is nearly a modern-day icon, his work in vulgarizing ocean science having reached generations of people. (Although his influence is definitely waning decades after his death—today’s younger audiences may be more familiar with the Wes Anderson parody of him in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou than having experienced his TV specials first-hand as I did as a boy.)  Is there more to say? Well, yes: While L’odyssée doesn’t quite stand as a definitive take on the man, its multi-decade narrative spanning everything from the immediate aftermath of WW2 to the 1980s offers glimpses at a man who had a tumultuous personal life, scientific ambitions that were left behind by the modern world, and personal failings that were magnified by his fame. At slightly more than two hours, the film has trouble fitting all of the biographical material in itself (Cousteau’s wartime heroics are definitely given short thrift) but still manages to cram a lot in there. As befitting its subject, the film does feature some great underwater footage and decent production values despite often reaching beyond the confines of its budget. Cousteau’s ascendancy to media fame is portrayed methodically, as are the issues inherent is transforming solid-but-dull science into something made for the masses. Cousteau’s marital indiscretions are mentioned, but you will have to step out of the film to learn more about his “second family.”  The same goes for much of his tainted legacy and the gradual fading of his dreams of underwater colonization—mentioned but not dwelled upon, as Cousteau’s later years were definitely not as glorious as his heydays of media fame. Still, the film serves as a visually interesting primer on Cousteau-the-man as compared to the legend. Lambert Wilson does well in a good role spanning decades of aging, as does Audrey Tautou in an often-inglorious role as the wife reminding Cousteau of his obligations to their relationship. As most flashy biopics go, L’odyssée is best watched as a condensed collection of high points rather than a serious biography: but it did spur me to read Cousteau’s Wikipedia pages (The French one is more complete) and learn a lot about him in the process. There are defendable choices in how his story is presented on-screen, choosing an Antarctic endpoint more triumphant than the slow fade (and financial implosion) that his career experienced to the end. But that’s the nature of biopics—celebrate the highs, acknowledge the lows but leave audiences on a high note. Not good science or history, but good entertainment. Cousteau would probably chuckle at the parallels.

  • The Jesus Rolls (2019)

    The Jesus Rolls (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s a lot to explain if we’re going to tackle The Jesus Roll. We can talk about how this is John Turturro’s return behind the camera. We can say it’s a remake of a 1974 French film. Or we can say that it’s also a The Big Lebowski spinoff focusing on a minor character. Of those things, let’s make it clear that the link between the classic 1998 Coen Brothers film and this one is one of marketing more than theme or character, because once you’re past a few surface characteristics, what we have here is a flat and perplexing crime comedy. Turturro hams it up as a lustful Latin Jewish character, but makes the mistake of believing that an acclaimed supporting character is tolerable as the lead. The Jesus Rolls does have a few highlights—mostly in the cast, which (briefly) includes such notables as Christopher Walen, Audrey Tautou, Jon Hamm, Susan Sarandon and others. There’s also a strange unpredictability in the way the film becomes a road movie, then a sex comedy (ish) with libidinous characters (ah, there’s the French influence) then ends on a whim with no real conclusion. (Or rather—it keeps going for a minute after what would have been a conclusion, just long enough to reassure us that the characters lived.) It all makes for a mess of a film—and one that’s not funny, not fun and not interesting. The comedy is sparse and pointless—while writer-director Turturro seems to be having a blast, it’s in service of a piece so personal that it might as well be rebarbative. The contrast with The Big Lebowski couldn’t be clearer.

  • L’écume des jours [Mood Indigo] (2013)

    L’écume des jours [Mood Indigo] (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2016) I have seldom seen a film commit so thoroughly to a deliberate continuous change of tone as L’écume des jours does. Adapted from a Boris Vian novel, this film charts the sad story of an inventor who goes from love to the loss of everything. It starts with a blizzard of whimsical imagination, realized through stop-motion, bright colours, delirious details and peppy protagonists. But when a major character falls ill and dies, the entire movie gradually withers with it: the sets get smaller, the tone gets bleaker, the cinematography turns dark and monochrome and then the film … ends. As a reviewer, I was confronted with a twice-deliberate (given its literary source) downer in which the conclusion is not meant to be better than its beginning. L’écume des jours seeks to be an unpleasant experience as it goes along, as it wipes off silly smiles with the grim inevitability of death by a frozen heart. It’s a meticulously calculated downfall as well, with casual violence weaved into the fabric of the film’s imagined world well before our main characters are threatened. The star of the movie remains director Michel Gondry, bringing his highly idiosyncratic vision on-screen in a way that no other could hope to achieve. A number of memorable scenes in the film feel unique. He gets great performances by Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou (in a role fitfully reminiscent of Amélie), Omar Sy and Aïssa Maïga as a secondary character who ends up taking striking actions. L’écume des jours is a beautiful but sad, hilarious and then tragic film—I won’t blame anyone if they decide to turn it off soon after the honeymoon, secure in the knowledge that it won’t get any better.