Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center 2015

[Chris Knipp]

CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ: MÉTAMORPHOSES (2014)


AMIRA AKILI AND SÉBASTIEN HIREL IN MÉTAMORPHOSES

Honoré's mythological misfire

Perhaps this is an "ambitious undertaking" as a blurb says, but Christophe Honoré's foray into classical mythology is inexplicable and hard to make much sense of. Despite a lot of nice-looking young people, who look good naked and are often seen that way, Métamorphoses is a big disappointment. It brings to the screen, obviously "reimagined," a selection of tales from Ovid’s magnum opus. Honoré, whose films have mostly been light, though melancholy, and specifically rooted in everyday Parisian life, here tackles the great Latin narrative poem of transformation, mythology, and the history of Roman civilization, transplanting it to a, mostly vague, version of present-day France. The cast, when dressed, wear a motley assortment of informal modern-day clothes. Sometimes they take to the water, and dip in a lake. Sometimes they wander the woods. Sometimes they enter the banlieue, urban projects on the periphery, where police arrive seeking, without apparent success, to quell a large gathering. From time to time classical music, ranging from antique to modern, is heard.

As the film begins, Jupiter (Sébastien Hirel) absconds with buxom schoolgirl Europa (newcomer Amira Akili). Their courtship is the film's unifying thread, which is interspersed with interludes involving Narcissus (Arthur Jacquin), Orpheus and Eurydice, Bacchus (Damien Chapelle), and the Bacchantes, with humans repeatedly changed into animals. One such scene riskily staged on the floor of a mosque shows a naked couple making love, later turning into live lions, the female violently pawing the male.

Christophe Honoré's sublimely melancholy Parisian winter musical Love Songs, a Rendez-Vous 2008 selection, is a film I never tire of, and nearly all of his films have appealed to me, some very much. I like Honoré and I too am a fan of his muse, Louis Garrel. Perhaps the director needed a break from his usual stars and milieux. But this is the kind of thing Cocteau or Rohmer could probably have done better. Honoré succeeded (in La Belle Personne with an updating of the 17th-century Princesse de Clèves of Madame de Lafayette, but ancient Rome is too far afield for him.

Métamorphoses, 105 mins., debuted at Venice 30 August 2014, showing in a dozen other international festivals. This is a perfect festival film; it has almost zero theatrical release potential. AlloCiné press rating 3.2. Shown as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere, where it was screened for this review.