French filmmaker Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric) is struggling to complete a spy thriller inspired by his enigmatic diplomat brother (Louis Garrel) when Carlotta (Marion Cotillard), the wife who had vanished 21 years earlier, casually strolls up the beach where Ismael's partner of two years, astrophysicist Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is relaxing.
★★★
And so, Arnaud Desplechin and Mathieu Amalric go on making pseudo-sequels. Just as My Golden Days revisited Paul Dedalus from Ma Vie Sexuelle, their seventh collaboration catches up on Ismael Vuillard, who had previously appeared in Kings & Queen. If we didn't know any better, we'd be tempted to think that Desplechin is playing self-reflexive games. After all, he has named Marion Cotillard's prodigal wife Carlotta in a nod towards Alfred Hitchcock's classic reincarnation fantasy, Vertigo.
Her sudden return after abandoning her old existence takes some swallowing, especially as her account of the intervening years is so spurious. But the sight of Cotillard teasing the straightlaced Charlotte Gainsbourg by dancing to Bob Dylan's ‘It Ain't Me Babe’ is one of many striking moments with which Desplechin litters this exercise in intellectual head-scratching. Another sees Cotillard's Jewish father (László Szabó) go into meltdown after being asked to leave a flight to Israel, while Hippolyte Girardot contributes an amusing cameo as the producer desperate to get Amalric to finish his film whether it makes sense or not. Not everything works amidst the lurching tones and storylines, however, with even Cotillard and Szabó being defeated by a deathbed sequence containing echoes of King Lear.
Thus, while cineastes will be hugging themselves as they spot the in-jokes and allusions, others will be bemused by the rattlebag of disparate ideas Desplechin trusts will coalesce into some form of narrative. But, even those without the foggiest about what they're watching will have to admit that the performances are compelling, and the prospect that the pieces will defy logic and slot into place remains enticing.
This director's cut might smack of self-indulgence, but it also says much about love and loss and the language of an artform that flirts with realism while remaining an illusion.