Friday, March 04, 2016
Review: VALLEY OF LOVE
VALLEY OF LOVE
Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert
VALLEY OF LOVE
WARNING: Contains spoilers...
Valley of Love takes Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, playing Gerard and Isabelle, a formerly married couple, on a trip together to Death Valley because their son, who committed suicide, said in a letter, possibly after he died, that he would meet them there if they followed the schedule he set out for them.
It’s a preposterous story*, best understood as an acting test: can Gerard Depardieu (whose son actually did die -- of pneumonia after a difficult life) and who is seriously overweight, and Isabelle Huppert (two of the greatest, (and busiest), over 60 actors in France (or the world)) actually make sense of seeming to be a couple and being real in this ridiculous plot.
The answer is, amazingly, they can.
The film is attractively shot, emotionally moving (including the times when you worry whether Gerard the actor as well as Gerard the character can spend days in the hot hot hot sun without collapsing), and interesting (until you think for even a second about what is going on).
(* It's not a problem to "suspend disbelief" and enjoy a ghost story. It is quite different to believe in a realistic social drama in which the characters accept the supernaturally unbelievable premise without dealing effectively with the fact that the basic premise is unbelievably supernatural.)
Written and directed by Guillaume Nicloux.
Starring Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert
VALLEY OF LOVE ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4120210/
GUILLAUME NICLOUX ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0630112
GERARD DEPARDIEU ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4120210/
ISABELLE HUPPERT ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4120210/
For the complete schedule of ...
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2016
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/preview-21st-rendez-vous-with-french.html
Labels: Gerard Depardieu, Guillaume Nicloux, Isabelle Huppert, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, VALLEY OF LOVE
