Villa Amalia (2009)

Benoit Jacquot helped to make a star out of Huppert, so that he had no trouble raising the funds for this utter turkey. Huppert's character (who has several names) acts as if, in the words of her lady friend in Sardinia (or wherever it is), she is on another planet. She seems repelled by the idea of heterosexual activity, and director Jacquot fails to depict an apparent lesbian love affair either. She's not interested in almost anything except the very big view from her shack on top of a mountain. The rest of the film is about her stripping herself of everything only to meet her long-lost father, who is interestingly depicted by Peter Arens. He suggests an entirely different route this movie could have taken, with interesting characters and a lively story, instead of the opposite. Huppert depicts a musician (classical piano) who makes frightful modernistic screechings (apparently composed and played by Huppert herself). We can only congratulate her for giving up her concert career, including the pretence that she is playing from musical notation. This picture essentially depicts an everyday fantasy: escaping from it all. And this is where it leads, to a purposeless, futile movie that wastes everyone's time. Don't bother with it.

Apart from the fact that she is light years the better actor of the two Isabelle Huppert is in some ways the French Michael Caine in that neither appears capable of turning down any film offered to them no matter how unsuitable, mediocre, or down-and-out rubbish it actually is. As a result both actors have more dross than gold on their CVs although again Huppert has much more gold than Caine, who has arguably more dross on his own CV than any actor alive or dead with the possible exception of Alan Lake and Maxwell Reed. This time around Huppert is playing a certified ding-dong, a woman so out of touch with reality and real life that all it takes is the witnessing of one kiss - not foreplay, not heavy petting, merely a kiss - to make her decide there and then to abandon everything she has achieved in life, career, home, relationship, and get as far away from her life so far as she can. Huppert is, of course, a sublime actress and I for one am prepared to watch her in anything - I said 'prepared' rather than 'happy' advisedly. Villa Amalia is like a Rohmer movie in which we not only WATCH paint drying but THINK about watching paint dry. Any viewer who was frightened as a child by logic will suffer acute distress when, having wound up in Ischia more by luck than judgment and with only one person knowing her whereabouts, the father who abandoned her forty years before turns up out of the blue and immediately recognizes someone he saw last when she was barely more than an infant. This is only one example of the directors' contempt for the audience. Huppert is in every single scene and that's about the only positive thing we take away with us.

Dreamy, existential drama primarily that works because of the presence of Isabelle Huppert. She plays Ann, a concert pianist who is betrayed by her lover. By way of retort she sells up and hits the road, intending to 'disappear' and forge a new identity. Her destination is wherever the day takes her, though it turns out to be Italy. This isn't convincing in the least, her idea seems more illusory than a firm commitment, though maybe that's the point. Antonioni pulled off this trick in The Passenger by locating its alienated journalist in Morocco. Ann obliquely refers to this when she observes that "Tangiers is an easy place to disappear in". There are other pleasures the film offers notably the superb performance by Huppert, she's never off-screen during the entire film and you never want her to be.

Huppert, twice a Best Actress winner there, has been elected president of 2009's Cannes festival jury. This is is her fifth gig for Jacquot, the previous ones being Les ailes de la colombe (1981), L'école de la chair (1998), Pas de scandale (1999), and La fausse suivante (2000). L'école de la chair is the adaptation of a Yukio Mishima story 'The School of Flesh,' a dry yet passionate tale of pride and power in love involving a wealthy woman's affair with an unpredictable young bisexual hustler (Vincent Martinez). Huppert was as remarkable as she's ever been in the underrated 'School of Flesh,' a haughty, elegant beauty often drenched in tears.'Villa Amalia' is another literary adaptation, this time from a novel by French author Pascal Quignard that won the Prix Goncourt. It concerns a woman who remakes herself, and the formidable Huppert is equal to the task. Again Jacquot's treatment is dry, and this time the motivations and emotional ties are more talked about than felt. The voyage however is more focused and less fatuous than the young French actress' trip to India in Jacquot's previous movie, 'The Untouchable' (2006) In fact there is a terrifying and mysterious intensity about the protagonist.Ann (Huppert) fleetingly sees her long-time boyfriend Thomas (Xavier Beauvois) kissing a woman in the doorway of their house. From then on she will have nothing further to do with him. Something clicks. It's not just him. This is just the last straw. She's fed up with her life. Her realization comes quickly and her actions also. She is a concert pianist. She stops playing in the middle of a concert, and cancels the rest of the season. She bundles up all her clothes in some very large plastic bags and puts them in the trash. (Hasn't thought about recycling, it seems.) Burns snapshots and papers, and a couple of CDs. (Hasn't thought about toxic waste damage either.) Coincidentally, right after seeing Thomas that evening, she runs into Georges (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a friend from her youth who turns out to carry the flame for her, although he also seems to be gay. A lonely fellow, Georges, he is dying to share meals with her. They do have one restaurant dinner. She says she loves eating out alone. He hates it. He also had a little cabin attached to his house she can use for her practicing. She has not vowed to give up playing; even less her composing, for she does compose, and we see her doing it.Ann uses the self-effacing Georges to efface herself. She takes out all her money from the bank and Georges agrees to keep it in his account, so her name is no longer on anything. She has decided to sink below the global radar and so must have no cell phone, no email, no credit cards. And off she goes, leaving poor Georges and Thomas (who keeps pleading to be taken back) far behind and taking public transportation first northward, then south. She's talked to Georges about Tangier. In fact after a long swim--made credible by our seeing her doing constant workouts in public pools in the lead-up--she somehow winds up on the island of Ischia, disappeared among yachts like the girl in Antonionni's 'L'Avventura.' Here, with her hair cut short and minimal belongings, she sets up a retreat, persuading an old Italian woman to let her use an abandoned building she finds at the top of a hill. (It's painted a lovely faded Chinese red, which goes perfectly with Isabelle's coloring and hair.) She lets Georges come and visit her. She's taken up with a girlfriend, a lovely young Italian woman (Maya Sansa), who comes in a boat with her ex-boyfriend and rescues Ann when she has swum out too far. She composes, drawing the bars on paper herself with a pencil.When Isabelle Huppert says no, and trashes her possessions, you don't know really why. She doesn't seem to know. But with Huppert, there's a devastating self confidence that makes it plausible. This is said to be faithful to the Quignard novel; I cannot comment, not having read it. The film is an experience, even if it feels in some ways derivative and unsatisfying.'Villa Amalia' opens in France April 9, 2009. It is part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, March 2009.