Camille (Jeanne Balibar), a young French actress, has precipitously left Paris for Italy three years ago. The reasons for her departure, or rather her flight, remain mysterious. She has found love and success in Torino. Ogo (Sergio Castellitto), a famous director who heads a theatre company, has given her her chance. She has become the leading lady in the company and his lover. This is the first time she returns to Paris, to act in a series of performances of As you desire me by Luigi Pirandello. Camille will be confronted with the past she has fled. She secretly dreads meeting Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffé), the man she left. But she will meet him again. Ugo also has a secret. Being in Paris is for him an opportunity to search for a lost, unpublished, manuscript of Goldoni. This quest will lead him to the troubling Dominique (Hélène de Fougerolles). Passions will rise. Each will be confronted with the truth. The theatre, once again, will serve as a backdrop and a revelation to the truth.
Special Agent Matti
Who knows? Who cares?
This is one long film, even for an usher who thinks that more is better. It's made longer by the European tradition of including things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, elevating art over crass commercialism and refusing to deal with the lowest common denominator. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
The "play within a movie" thing would be a very clever plot device if you could figure out what was happening. I am a bright spark and even I barely figured out that the play is about a woman who is confused about a relationship. I didn't associate that with the movie characters at all. I thought it was the European tradition of including things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, elevating art over crass commercialism and refusing to deal with the lowest common denominator.
Meantime, Jeanne Balibar is a wonderfully thin, sexual, ennui-filled and angst-ridden French actress. I am looking forward to comparing her performance to that of Charlotte Gainsbourg in My wife is an actress (Ma femme est une actrice). (You can tell that Va savoir? is a French film because the lead actor flashes her tits in the shower, which, mysteriously, she leaves running.) Sergio Castellitto and Jacques Bonnaffé are both dazed and confused in a manner that suggests too much love and far too much red wine. As I have never loved (or lost) and hates the taste of red wine he will say no more.
If you want a torpid love quadrangle, Va savoir is for you. Speaking fluent and colloquial French and Italian will help.
PG (Nudity)
154 minutes (2:34 hours)
Film: 18 April 2002 - Melbourne, Sydney
