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Autumn

2006, Movie, NR, 110 mins

Autumn: Review

AUTUMN | AUTOMNE
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American writer-director-producer-editor Ra'up McGee's homage to dark French thrillers (themselves homages to American crime pictures of the 1940s and '50s) reunites three friends whose lives were irreparably damaged by a childhood trauma. Contract killer Jean-Pierre (Laurent Lucas) works for smooth, middle-aged gangster Noel (Michel Aumont), who uses his elegant Parisian bistro, Automne, as a staging area for various criminal activities. Jean-Pierre's childhood friend, taxi driver Andre (Benjamin Rolland), is a chronic gambler who's in debt to Noel; Jean-Pierre regularly lends him money to keep him off Noel's bad side. One afternoon, Jean-Pierre is staking out a deadbeat Noel wants killed and runs into Michelle (Irene Jacob); she, Andre and Jean-Pierre grew up together, but neither man has seen her since they were 10 years old. Reestablishing contact with Michelle brings into brutal focus the vague dissatisfaction Jean-Pierre feels with his life, and he vows to leave his criminal associations behind. But though Jean-Pierre sees Michelle as his salvation, her life is as compromised as his. Jean-Pierre's impulse to protect her by beating the hell out of a would-be rapist with whom she's had shady dealings has far-reaching consequences — his underworld boss sends a pair of goons to demand reparation in the form of a favor: Jean-Pierre must locate a stolen metal briefcase. The complication: Michelle has it. McGee fragments a slight story of doomed love and dishonor among thieves with flashbacks and abrupt shifts of location, but though he succeeds in making a simple story look complicated, he doesn't make it especially interesting. He appears to have learned all the wrong lessons from filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Melville, who slyly subverted Hollywood gangster-movie conventions by dispensing with the illicit appeal of gunplay, heists and colorful crooks to focus on cold, alienated sociopaths who've been systematically reduced to hollow shells by lives of constant lying, cheating, betrayal and looking over their shoulders. McGee's film is simply opaque, propped up by fashionable conceits: the polaroids Michelle takes obsessively, the glib one-liners, the mystery of what's in the briefcase, the symbolic games of petanque in the park, and the redemptive affair that might be more convincing if Jean-Pierre and Michelle weren't such brittle ciphers that even subtle, seasoned performers like Lucas and Jacob can't breath life into. The film looks great, but there's nothing under the high-gloss veneer. (In French, with subtitles) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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Autumn
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