CAFÉ DE FLORE: MOVIE REVIEW

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Cast:Vanessa Paradis, Kevin Parent, Hélène Florent, Évelyne Brochu, Marin Gerrier, AliceDuboisDirector:Jean-Marc ValléeRuntime:120 min.Language:FrenchCountry:CanadaVerdict:Guilty of rationalizing unethical behavior with irrational mystification. Butas a piece of music it is fantastic to listen to. Genre:Drama
                Café De Flore structures its narrative in a manner that invites the viewer to put his judgingcap on, and then proceeds to turn that judgment back on the viewer himself. Orat least, that seems to be the intention. And despite that, judge I will. Bythe powers vested in me by the blogosphere judge I will, more so because thefilm’s narrator (a woman) basically asks us to consider two mostly archetypicalscenarios. There’s Rose (Ms. Brochu), introduced as Antoine’s (Mr. Parent)better half, and her characteristics include such things as – (a) a smooth lapKevin can caress (b) a body that sways along in slow motion, and that beatsrhythmically when they have photogenic sex, and (c) a dance so graceful andeconomic you wonder why Hindi films with all their song and dance numbers investso much in acrobats. To summarize, dear reader, she’s in tune. Mr. Vallée hasenough visual chops to make that pretty apparent, more so considering the factthat the film’s title is not a reference to the famous café in Paris, but Doctor Rockit’s lovely piece, andthat his protagonist Kevin is a disc jockey. And whose ex, a most dutiful wife aswe get to learn a little later, is basically out of tune, so much so that Mr.Vallée has a dance sequence which starts off with Rose and draws us, and Kevin,in and ends with the blandness the ex, Carole (Ms. Florent), brings to thetable, drawing us and Kevin out. Not much is spent in the how either, with asingle glance in a party setting the flame, and a jump in time consolidatingthe directions on the triangle. That makes the film less of a “moral dilemma” andmore of a situation where a decision ought to be had, where the correct decisionis the one I shall pronounce in the subsequent few lines, and where the film’srhetoric strategy is clearly in the service of a wrong end. The strategy being,mirroring Kevin’s profession, free-flowing through different periods, one thepresent and the other the past set in 1960s Paris where Jacqueline (Ms.Paradis), a single mother, lives with and loves her son Laurent (Mr. Gerrier),who is affected by Down’s syndrome, and who in the entire film doesn’t have amoment of his own. Even a close-up is awarded only in relation to a dramaticmoment unfolding with respect to the mother. That makes him an archetype too,an imbecile who needs to be taken care of, and if I try and bring Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal on to theaforementioned table, Jacqueline with her possessiveness is of a similarcharacter type as Barbara Covett. Mr. Vallée sets this association up bylending them an accommodation in a crummy little apartment structure, where thelow-key yellow lighting often covering the faces in shadows screams ofsomething sinister lurking in the not too distant future. A future that becomesthe present when Laurent, a seven-year old, falls in love with Véro (Ms.Dubois), another little one afflicted with the syndrome.                 The narrative thenbecomes one long music piece, a refreshing take on the hyperlink film if youask me, with the periods not having to set the action in the other up. Unlikemost films of this breed (consider Mr. Stephen Daldry’s The Hours and The Readeras frames-of-reference), Café De Flore discourageshistoricity, and much like the waves in the image above that have been cut andpasted from numerous individual tracks, it collapses the past and the presentinto one free-flowing unit. Taken that way, it’s a film that’s so ideal for ourage, where any similarity to be drawn is only through association, and which bydefinition makes our mind the DJ here. Let me be a little clearer: if the twoperiods were different films, one might have found little inspiration to linkthem into a cause-and-effect scenario. This makes the film’s rhetoric, which isvery much present and which basically overrides ours, all the more aggravating.Much moralizing of the triangular situation (probably to both appease andtease), by Antoine’s father and elder daughter, is spent before a psychic isintroduced to the proceedings, whom Carole meets to discuss her dreams where alittle boy (on one occasion referred to as a little monster) hides behind herseat while she’s driving, and whose fingers cause the scary jump. That makesthe appearance of Down’s syndrome just as specific to the narrative as having apenguin for a baby. I mean, in each of the case the filmmaker doesn’t need todo anything other than to find different angles from where to capture theopacity so much so that they become the “other” within the frame. Which leavesthe slow-mo sequence during the opening credits, and the dozen or so kidsafflicted with the syndrome walking past us, a formal choice of really reallybad taste. I mean, I am aware of the trappings of having to include such anelement where the mere mention might signal a guarded reception, lest we beaffected by such easy sentimentality, but that is by no means a defense Mr.Vallée can put up, considering there’s a distinct lack of individuality within hisframes, and Laurent for the most part is interchangeable with a cute dog. Whathis inclusion brings to the narrative is the leverage to use the inherentdependence to establish Jacqueline’s reason to get up in the morning, whichbasically reflects Carole’s reason (her husband Kevin and their two daughters),without which they both might as well end their lives. Which doesn’t sound thatalarming when I put it that way, but which assumes a whole lot of ethicalirresponsibility when it equates the binary helplessness of Laurent as anexplanation for Antoine’s infidelity. And which completely renders the horrorof the past meaningless, much in keeping with the whole re-incarnation thing,by moralizing/rationalizing them as incomplete actions that need closure in thepresent and more or less absolving them of any guilt. Carole and Antoine andRose embrace each other in what can be only interpreted as a WTF moment, somuch so that when Antoine winks at his wedding, it might as well have beenKeyser Soze giving his lawyer a high-five at having getting away with so much ofbullshit. And at the end the young Antoine and Carole stand in front of apicture, with their heads flanking it, all of them in line, like a wave, pastand present together, and you wonder if the past is rationalizing the future,or is it the other way round. It could’ve been a fascinating composition, hadMr. Vallée employed no zoom, and had the elements within the picture been inthe same visual plane. But much like his strategy, where the free-flow is onlyan illusion, the zoom clearly defines the source and the destination. Which isa shame if you ask me.