To live one's life? The title may seem a bit too grand, in between an 18th, or 19th century moral tale crossed with french existentialist uneasiness, but the film lives up to it, turning it obliquely into a canvas of political contemporary matters.
To give away what happens is to betray its mood, a mood that spills over into matters that retain and resume their urgency, and are crisply clarified in the last sequences, but I will give away a plot-line: Romain Duris lives an uneasy life, has a chillingly distant wife (she is superb), loves his kids, and arguably does not know, despite his professional panache (guaranteed by the way his home looks like and some dialogue with visitors in his office), what adult life means and how it is signaled about. He then gathers his failing marriage has an antagonist, who, in perfect french manner, does not want to be an antagonist at all, it is just the way life goes, outside how you want to live it, if you are adult and manly enough. An ugly accident happens. He has to change his life.
And he does: long, ominous takes that succumb into atmospheric lakes, leaks into the artistry he wanted to pursue and he now does, but with no guarantee. It is only in its aftermath - of his amorous new situation, and how the past reappears - that he meets his destiny.
What recapitulates the trajectory is the last sense of political complicity in the perilous open, a new social, humane if fragile contract.
This is a film in the best way of European political films that even pave the way to a new leftist sensibility; Romain Duris is a No-man, rather than an Everyman, that has a knack, though this may seem gratuitous, to appear most elegant in his shoes. It is some time an actor had that elegance, and also some sense of contrasted foregrounding with what takes its trail on screen.
To give away what happens is to betray its mood, a mood that spills over into matters that retain and resume their urgency, and are crisply clarified in the last sequences, but I will give away a plot-line: Romain Duris lives an uneasy life, has a chillingly distant wife (she is superb), loves his kids, and arguably does not know, despite his professional panache (guaranteed by the way his home looks like and some dialogue with visitors in his office), what adult life means and how it is signaled about. He then gathers his failing marriage has an antagonist, who, in perfect french manner, does not want to be an antagonist at all, it is just the way life goes, outside how you want to live it, if you are adult and manly enough. An ugly accident happens. He has to change his life.
And he does: long, ominous takes that succumb into atmospheric lakes, leaks into the artistry he wanted to pursue and he now does, but with no guarantee. It is only in its aftermath - of his amorous new situation, and how the past reappears - that he meets his destiny.
What recapitulates the trajectory is the last sense of political complicity in the perilous open, a new social, humane if fragile contract.
This is a film in the best way of European political films that even pave the way to a new leftist sensibility; Romain Duris is a No-man, rather than an Everyman, that has a knack, though this may seem gratuitous, to appear most elegant in his shoes. It is some time an actor had that elegance, and also some sense of contrasted foregrounding with what takes its trail on screen.