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After The Life

2002, Movie, NR, 124 mins

After The Life: Review

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Unfazed by the daunting fact that bad melodramas outnumber good ones by a considerable margin, Belgian writer/director Lucas Belvaux capped his ambitious trilogy of genre exercises — which chronicles the misadventures of a group of acquaintances in Grenoble, France, across three very different films — with a sudsy tale of marriage on the rocks. Belvaux is no Douglas Sirk, but the film is an admirable, if uneven, conclusion to an audacious project. The film's spotlight is occupied by police inspector Pascal (Gilbert Melki) and his wife, Agnes (Dominique Blanc), a schoolteacher who's been addicted to morphine for the past 20 years. Throughout their 15-year marriage, Pascal has used his connections as a cop to score dope for his wife, but ever since Bruno (Belvaux) — the revolutionary antihero of the trilogy's first film, ON THE RUN — escaped from prison, Pascal's arrangement with dealer Jacquillat (Patrick Deschamps) has hit a serious snag. Bruno blames Jacquillat for ratting him out to the police, and Jacquillat knows that it's only a matter of time before Bruno shows up on his doorstep, probably with gun in hand. Jacquillat gives Pascal an ultimatum: No dope for Agnes until Bruno is dead. At first Pascal refuses; there've been a lot of shady deals on his beat, but he draws the line at murder. Desperate for drugs, Agnes hits the streets and, in the kind of coincidence that only happens in a melodrama, is saved from a brutal beating by none other than the fugitive Bruno. The grateful Agnes hides him in a remote mountain chalet belonging to her colleague, Cecile (Ornella Muti). Pascal, meanwhile, has his own arrangement with Cecile: He's agreed to follow her husband, Alain (Francois Morel), whom we know from the trilogy's second film, AN AMAZING COUPLE, Cecile suspects of having an affair. The sad-eyed Blanc is remarkably good as the desperate junkie who's ultimately faced with a wrenching choice, but though Belvaux is a crafty writer, he's faced here with an impossible task: braiding two very different story lines — the deadly serious police drama of ON THE RUN and the frivolous farce of AN AMAZING COUPLE — into a satisfying conclusion. It's especially hard to believe that Pascal, whose marriage and career are on the line, would bother pursuing Cecile and Alain's madcap misunderstandings. Impressive as the entire project may be, Belvaux's left mixing apples and oranges into an inconsistent whole. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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