I love French cinema,vraiment,but this sort of slop gives it a bad name. For every zingy,stylish Diva there are sadly many more turkeys like this. Firstly,as others have pointed out,the actors are more given to pouting and exuding existential angst than actually filling out believable characters. I couldn't have cared less about a single one of them,which is a fatal flaw in any film in my book. Implausible,unsympathetic and nauseatingly narcissistic. Worst of all is Monica Bellucci ("ooh,isn't she so yummy?") who swans through the film to no great effect,her role merely to be absurdly gorgeous and act as a hollow erotic talisman for the archetypal passionate yet soft-headed French romantic lead,played by the gormless Cassel. God,I bet they made a riveting couple when they were married. I watched the movie over several sittings as it just did nothing to hold my interest. The flashbacks and changes in perspective succeeded in alienating me and muddying the already creaky plot and were presumably stuck in there to earn the director "cred points" rather than for any coherent artistic effect. Subsequently when it thankfully drew to its close,I was none the wiser about who did what and to whom. Or more importantly why? We are supposed to buy that old French canard (geddit?) about men and women losing their heads pour l'amour. Then again did Max ever really love Alice/Lisa/his fiancée? How did everyone afford to live in such high Parisian style when none appeared to do much work? Where did Alice get her money from anyway? Oh yes,she was a sometime actress as we saw in that superfluous sub-plot about the Midsummer Night's Dream production. Talk about cynically pandering to amateur critics to facilitate guff about " plays-within-plays" and so on! More proof of a director too interested in ticking "art-house film" boxes and flattering the intelligence of his overawed audience. Before the final conflagration in the eponymous flat,I still wondered if perhaps it was I who'd failed to match up to a fine and complex,multi-layered piece of movie-making. Then when I saw the vacant look on Lisa's face as her bloke torched the place followed by the clichéd slow-mo of Max's mate going backwards through the café window,the man behind the curtain was cruelly shown up. It wasn't me after all-this so-called art film is as much an imposter as Alice herself. And it should be put on a plane to Rome one-way forthwith.
Review of The Apartment
