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Jun 15, 2009
« Les voleurs » : the sunny side of ageing. (7/10)
« Les voleurs » is Catherine Deneuve’s fourth film with André Téchiné. They first worked together on « Hôtel des Amériques », in 1982, and she became the director’s favourite actress : his « muse », as she had already been for years to Yves Saint-Laurent, as if, like Garbo and a few other select actresses, her beauty was beyond sex and attracted men who loved women, but not sexually.
Both André Téchiné and Catherine Deneuve were born in 1943, and therefore fifty-three, or fifty-two, when « Les voleurs » was shot. Ageing involves different challenges for a male director than for his female star.
At fifty-three -or fifty-two-, Téchiné directs a film -possibly- less personal than his earlier fare, unless, with years, his taste has just turned more mainstream, or the movie-going audience has grown used to him, or both.
Whatever the reason, « Les voleurs » is more accessible than most of the director’s previous efforts ; it is also better.
Improved audience-friendliness has its rewards : higher budgets, reflecting increased box-office expectations.
Fat budgets often cover up for lack of inspiration : ask Luc Besson. Not here : « Les voleurs » proves money matters and sometimes makes films better.
Téchiné needed money to match on screen and soundtrack the level of detail and precision of his character and story development.
The film « below-the-line » -i.e. physical production- had to be worthy of its « above-the-line » -i.e. writing, direction and talent- : thrifty production values would have condemned to waste much of the film writers’ free-spending creativity.
Each carefully written scene deserved to be married to its ideal setting, each part to a custom-made wardrobe, haircut, car, residence, actor ; they also had to in order to unload their full potential on screen.
Matches made in cinema heaven do not come cheap. Produced on a shoestring, « Les voleurs » would have been the on screen ghost of its promises on paper.
It is not : for André Téchiné, ageing means increased creative and economic freedom. Like a kid in a candy store, the director had the means to indulge his storytelling « gourmandise » -gluttony, but certainly no sin- and to afford the multiple characters, story lines, locations... his creative hunger had dreamt.
Unlike many spoilt kids in cinema candy store -Léos Carax, Michael Cimino & Associates-, Téchiné is a wise spender : he gives free rein to his creativity, then picks and chooses : his cast mixes stars and newcomers, film and stage actors -Didier Bezace, as Ivan-, launches Laurence Côte’s career and closes Ivan Desny’s, who plays Victor and, forty-three years after "Le bon dieu sans confession" , has lost his hair, but keeps a moustache ; his story lines strike the right balance between quality and quantity ; so do the film voices over as a guarantee polyphony shall not crumble back to the opening cacophony.
André Téchiné breathes the perfect mix of complexity and clarity into his film.
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