by Douglas Messerli
André Téchiné and
Mehdi Ben Attia (screenplay), André Téchiné (director) Impardonnables (Unforgiveable)
/ 2011
Although André Téchiné's 2011
film, Unforgiveable, was fairly well-received by critics, it still
was not seen to be as likeable or coherent as his early films such as Wild
Reeds or The Witnesses or even a later film
like Being 17; as The New York Times critic
Manohla Dargis, for example, observed: "Unforgivable isn't one of Mr.
Téchiné's greatest achievements, but it's engrossing even when its increasingly
populated story falters, tripped up by unpersuasive actions, connections and
details."
The wide range of characters
who weave in and out of novelist Francis’ (André Dussollier) life—his sudden
wife, the real estate agent Judith (Carole Bouquet), his daughter Alice
(Mélanie Thierry), who just as suddenly abandons her own daughter, Vicky (Zoé
Duthion), the female, heavy drinking detective, Anna Maria (Adriana Asti), who
previously had a lesbian relationship with Judith, the wealthy spoiled
small-time drug dealer, Alvise (Andrea Pergolesi), with
whom Alice is deeply in love, and Jérémie (Mauro Conte), Anna Maria’s
violent, possibly repressed homosexual son, who Francis hires for follow Judith
after he suspects her of extramarital affairs—almost all seem to be dropped
into this stewpot of a story without any explanation of how they have come
together or what their feelings are for one other. You only need to read the
almost incomprehensible plot summary on Wikipedia to perceive the utter
zaniness of the story, in which the characters shift back and forth in the
French and Italian languages, the tale inexplicably taking place on a distant
island, Sant' Erasmo, near
Venice.
I won’t even try, in
this case, to reiterate why the characters are doing what they are and how they
arrived into their complex relationships. The movie doesn’t seem to know and
certainly does not attempt to explain it. But I think that is the point. These
figures might as well be out of the novel Francis is frustratedly trying to
write. They are somewhat melodramatic, and, except for Francis, are beautiful
imaginations of figures trapped in a world in which nothing is truly knowable.
A bit like
the characters in Gilbert Sorrentino’s epic fiction Mulligan Stew these
creations speed up and down the Venice cannels without any real purpose except
to attempt to get closer to each other. They are figures of the imagination:
the authors’ (the story was based on a fiction by Philippe Djian), our own, and
their own—all out of control. All are totally unfit for their assigned
professions, perhaps even Francis who seems to be orchestrating their
interrelationships.
Although Judith might be an
excellent real-estate agent, she is simply, in her beauty and youth, not
appropriate as Francis’ island-bride, temporarily bedding down with the boy who
is following her; Alice is neither a good daughter nor a capable mother; Alvise
is incompetent as a member of the Venice aristocracy, as a petty drug agent,
and as a lover; the self-hating beauty Jérémie is
as clumsy in his detective duties as Peter Seller’s Inspector Clouseau; the
vodka swigging Anna Maria might be better sitting at a bar and swilling down
drinks on a couch.
And yet,
somehow Téchiné, along with his impressive cast, turns this nonsense into a
fascinating human farce in which you actually care for all of their outcomes.
In the end, all the film’s characters have some kind of reconciliation. Francis
finishes writing. Anna Maria returns from France after having successfully
found Alice. Upon Alvise’s imprisonment, Alice returns to Francis. And Francis
finally serves as a kind of father to Jérémie, not only saving him from a suicide
attempt but forcibly disciplining him for his inability to love his mother and
for his violence for people whose ideas he finds threatening. By film’s end,
Francis invites the lovely Judith back into his own Paris world.
Perhaps art is
greater than life; or, perhaps life triumphs over art. In this beautiful work,
we can never be certain. Are these all figures of Francis’ imagination or has
he, through his writer’s block, been able to finally integrate his life with
the ghosts of his present and past?
Los Angeles, January 12, 2019
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January
2019).
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