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Oct 26, 2007
"L'équipier" : film wreck at the lighthouse. (1/5)
In 1993, Philippe Lioret directed a charming and unpretentious first film : « Tombés du ciel » (Lost in transit). After being stolen his passport, a businessman found himself stranded in the international zone of CDG Paris airport and temporarily shared the life of its near permanent population of outcasts.
The bittersweet comedy owed a lot to Jean Rochefort, who was delightfully zany in the main part.
Philippe Lioret was no early bloomer or directing boy wonder : born in 1955, he had until « Tombés du ciel » worked as a sound engineer, not the most natural path to film direction.
In 2004, eleven years after his promising debut, Philippe Lioret directed his fourth feature film, « L’équipier ».
Four films in eleven years : a meticulous craftsman’s pace. Unfortunately, meticulous craftsmen too sometimes manufacture lousy products.
« L’équipier » was shot on location in Ouessant, an island off the western tip of Brittany.
Action takes place in 1963. Yvon (Philippe Torreton) belongs to the local crew of lighthouse keepers ; he is married to Mabé (Sandrine Bonnaire), they have no children, because they cannot. Enters Antoine (Grégori Dérangère) : originally from Touraine (the Loire valley) and back from the war in Algeria (the Evian treaty which recognised Algerian independence was signed in 1962), he is to become Antoine’s team mate at the lighthouse.
Needless to write more : you may not know, but you have already guessed the whole plot.
If you have not, you are sufficiently lacking in creativity to become a successful French screenwriter.
If you are a creative optimist, you will believe that the love triangle, which jumps at the audience’s eyes the instant Antoine’s meet Mabé’s, shall fill only the movie first act and then lead to further developments.
Wrong, unless said developments were kept under wraps for « L’équipier 2 », but Philippe Lioret’s film seems unlikely to father a « Rocky »-size progeny of sequels.
To be fair, the film includes a few anorexic subplots : the island fishery’s owner is hot for Mabé, one of his employees ; the bar owner’s non anorexic daughter is hot for Antoine ; so are his work « colleagues » : they want to ship him back to the continent.
(This latest subplot is a more consistent, if not less predictable, and shall be explored in a subsequent posting.)
« L’équipier » story line could have served only as a pretext to recreate with gritty realism the daily life on Ouessant island in the early 60’s, detail the work of lighthouse keepers, magnify the scenery, seascapes and ocean storms...
Such is not, unfortunately, the case.
« L’équipier » and « Le frère du guerrier » share very similar premises, as confirmed by their respective posters : both are divided vertically in three equal parts, each one isolating one of their three main characters : in « Le frère du guerrier », Mélanie Doutey stands between her husband and her husband’s brother ; in « L’équipier », Sandrine Bonnaire stand between Yvon and Antoine.
From there, the two films embark on quickly diverging roads.
In « Le frère du guerrier », the love triangle is only a ploy, a tool, to depict a society, a time, the Dark Ages, the struggle between civilisation and lawlessness, spirituality and violence, and other themes which ultimately matter more than the main story line.
The love triangle is nevertheless brought about much more gradually and skilfully, much better integrated to the film global environment and psychologically convincing than in « L’équipier ».
The qualities of Pierre Jolivet’s film are more a matter of execution than of originality.
« L’équipier » comes short in both respects. We are only allowed glimpses of the life inside the lighthouse, never enter Yvon’s and Antoine’s bedroom(s ?), learn close to nothing about their work.
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