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Jun 17, 2009
« Les voleurs » : films that were not. (8/10)
Does a choral film need stars ? Why not, provided they act like « primi inter pares », rather than guests from another planet. The film is called « Les voleurs », but its cast is selfless : the film characters may rob cars and each other of many things, the actors who portray do not steal scenes from each other.
Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve are a sound investment, as each performs double duties and plays both a character on screen and a voice over. As characters on screen, they are actors among actors ; as the film two main voices, immediately identified out of the cacophony of the opening titles, they separate themselves from the rest of the cast, as befits their star status.
As Téchiné picks and chooses, what he discards becomes nearly as significant as what he selects.
Strolling among all the relationships that connect his characters, the director picks and gathers the story lines he shall use like the letters of a password too complex to risk being second-guessed by his audience.
All the paths Téchiné chooses not to follow in the maze of his characters and their relationships are aborted films : they inform us about the surviving one, like failed attempts do about a successful one, and tempt our own creativity into bringing them to life.
Marie is divorced, her former husband is a psychiatrist, she takes Juliette to see him ; during his only scene in the film, he shows more concern for Marie’s psychological state than for Juliette’s. He shall nevertheless not foresee his former wife’s suicide and leaves us wondering about their past couple, their subsequent relationship, if his later reappearance could have changed anything to the film, if he was not somehow -through scenes not shown on screen- both responsible for Juliette’s survival and Marie’s death.
Marie tells Alex she has children, even grand children. We never see them during the film. Do they really exist ? Are they totally out of her life ? In partial answer, maybe, to our questions, Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve’s own daughter, sits -according to the film shooting trivia-, uncredited and unseen, among her mother’s philosophy students.
Like Marie, Alex is divorced, but without children, his personal past never resurfaces in the course of the film.
As the film begins, Justin steals his father’s gun, but, like so often in real life, nothing comes out of this potential « prologue » of a fateful act. « Les voleurs » is very good at dispatching us after red herrings into narrative dead ends, while it follows the winding road of its own agenda to its secret destination.
Similarly, we cannot help wondering what the characters to which Téchiné does not give voice would have told us : how would have Ivan tried and justified himself ? how did Mireille feel of her treatment by her husband ? what did, above all, Victor, the criminal paterfamilias and behind-the-scenes puppet master, think ?
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