I saw this during a French film festival in London. Both Fanny Ardant and Marion Vernoux were in attendance for a Q&A session afterwards.
The basic story is of an older woman in Calais having a brief affair with a younger man after retiring from her job as a dentist and re-discovering the sexual spark missing from her long marriage, before seeing the error of her ways. All this is set in motion because her daughters buy her a membership package to a kind of club for retired people. And therein lies the first of several problems. I cannot believe that a woman with such apparent vitality as the erstwhile Caroline would, even for a moment, consider joining a club for people who have nothing else to do. I also cannot believe that anyone - and especially daughters - would buy such a risible gift in the first place. Maybe it's a French thing.
Caroline then spends much time either in the company of a bunch of ageing nonentities, who seem to enjoy the idea of hurtling towards eternity via the purgatory of a seniors club, or in the lustful embrace of a younger bloke and his energetic tumescence, while her husband - who still works as a dentist and therefore has a rewarding, if somewhat boring life - appears to have all the charisma of a stunned hamster. But at least he's not filling other women's cavities while his wife is playing the lusty pink oboe instead of playing bingo in the afternoon. The story takes the usual turns and follows most of the usual clichés about such affairs until the film ends with another unlikely scenario. We all get old, we all need something to live for and we all need a bit of a spark in our relationships, but do we need yet another fairly uninteresting film to remind us of our mortality and apparent fragility when time starts to accelerate us ever faster towards our ultimate - and unavoidable - oblivion?
Not really.
The film is nicely photographed but ultimately it fails to engage on any level. The story is thin, the characters are not really developed beyond the cliché level and the script doesn't give the actors much to work with.
After the screening Fanny Ardant gave s few fairly unilluminating comments in reply to some hideously embarrassing questions from a bloke who thought that asking her whether she changed the sound of her voice for the film was an example of an interesting question.
Fanny's reply was "I was acting".
The basic story is of an older woman in Calais having a brief affair with a younger man after retiring from her job as a dentist and re-discovering the sexual spark missing from her long marriage, before seeing the error of her ways. All this is set in motion because her daughters buy her a membership package to a kind of club for retired people. And therein lies the first of several problems. I cannot believe that a woman with such apparent vitality as the erstwhile Caroline would, even for a moment, consider joining a club for people who have nothing else to do. I also cannot believe that anyone - and especially daughters - would buy such a risible gift in the first place. Maybe it's a French thing.
Caroline then spends much time either in the company of a bunch of ageing nonentities, who seem to enjoy the idea of hurtling towards eternity via the purgatory of a seniors club, or in the lustful embrace of a younger bloke and his energetic tumescence, while her husband - who still works as a dentist and therefore has a rewarding, if somewhat boring life - appears to have all the charisma of a stunned hamster. But at least he's not filling other women's cavities while his wife is playing the lusty pink oboe instead of playing bingo in the afternoon. The story takes the usual turns and follows most of the usual clichés about such affairs until the film ends with another unlikely scenario. We all get old, we all need something to live for and we all need a bit of a spark in our relationships, but do we need yet another fairly uninteresting film to remind us of our mortality and apparent fragility when time starts to accelerate us ever faster towards our ultimate - and unavoidable - oblivion?
Not really.
The film is nicely photographed but ultimately it fails to engage on any level. The story is thin, the characters are not really developed beyond the cliché level and the script doesn't give the actors much to work with.
After the screening Fanny Ardant gave s few fairly unilluminating comments in reply to some hideously embarrassing questions from a bloke who thought that asking her whether she changed the sound of her voice for the film was an example of an interesting question.
Fanny's reply was "I was acting".