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Oct 29, 2007
"L'équipier" : from Charybde to « Pschitt ». (2/5)
Though the film was shot on location, some views of the sea and the lighthouse even manage to seem plagued with digital effects, possibly because Philippe Lioret was trained as a sound engineer.
« Tombés du ciel » did not boast a spectacular visual talent, but the director made the most of the story limited setting. Because, like -by no choice of their own and through the force of habit- some of his movie characters, he felt safe in the microcosmic cocoon of Paris airport ?
By contrast, « L’équipier » at times seems to suffer from agoraphobia. Philippe Lioret is no open air director, he prefers to stay indoor. When, in a try to elevate the script clichés to melodrama status, he ventures out and films the elemental power and beautiful violence of the ocean, his tentative lyricism and sense of hyperbole fall flat.
The then president of France, whom we shall meet again, would have said it beautifully : « L’équipier » does not fizzle, but makes « Psshitt »...
Those in search of a great film about an island and islanders shall look elsewhere and settle on Roger Flaherty’s « Man of Aran » (1932-34). Though a documentary, the film is far richer in storytelling than Lioret’s movie, moving and aesthetically breathtaking, whereas « L’équipier looks like a substandard TV product.
A few times, « L’équipier » turns so bad it nearly succeeds to become a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of itself, as if deliberately sabotaged by its own makers : just as workers sometimes break the machines which, they believe, enslave them, why would a film crew not rebel at the junk they are forced to produce for a living ?
As the sun rises over the ocean - a shot as innovative as the film story line-, the soundtrack plays an ostensibly old-fashioned tune -in 1963, rock-and-roll had already come to France ; but not to Ouessant ?- by comedian Bourvil -less a teenage idol than the « yéyé » singers, but Yvon and Antoine admittedly are no teenagers- which speaks of « postcards ».
When Mabé and Antoine eventually yield to their common passion -sorry for this spoiler-, they do so, possibly overcome by patriotic duty, while Bastille Day fireworks burst in the sky.
Consciously or not -dangerously, in any case-, the scene evokes the seduction sequence between Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s « To catch a thief » ; no surprise, the comparison -does not play to Lioret’s advantage, despite his actors’ convincing effort.
Another supposed « L’équipier » climax shall nevertheless quote again Hitchcock and the final scene in « Saboteur ».
All this is bad. Here comes worse. « L’équipier » story unfolds within a flashback. Yes, you have again guessed right : Yvon and Mabé are dead, their daughter returns to Ouessant to sell the family house ; she meets the would-be buyers -bland but well-meaning Parisians, of course- and finds a book, mailed to her mother and written by no other than Antoine...
What, do you think, shall happen the morning after, when the 1963 flashback ends and we are back in 2004 ? No ! ? Yes ! They did dare do it : after discovering the truth about her and her parents, Yvon’s and Mabé’s and Antoine’s daughter shall eventually decide not to sell the house.
In doing so, she has a point, which the filmmakers would have been well advised to follow : like the house, the story should have stayed in the family.
The Parisian couple would have been unable to appreciate the house fully, filmgoers should not have been forced to sit through a story interesting only to those, if any, who lived it.
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