HOW I KILLED MY FATHER (Comment j'ai tu‚ mon pŠre)
Rating out of 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by Harvey Karten New Yorker Films Director: Anne Fontaine Writer: Jacques Fieschi, Anne Fontaine Cast: Michel Bouquet, Charles Berling, Natasha Regnier, Amira Casar, Stephane Guillon Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 6/13/02
Among the scores of interviews that cross the desks of film buffs every month, one that stuck out in my mind was of a director who holds that American audiences have a tough time with ambiguity. We Americans want to know who's the good guy and who is the bad guy, no ifs, ands or buts. But that's not the way people are. Most of us are simply flawed people with good and bad traits. Even Matt Damon's character in the conventional thriller "The Bourne Identity" gives us pause: by refusing to carry out his government's orders as a CIA agent, was he doing good or evil?
"Bourne" notwithstanding, few movies are inhabited by principals as ambiguous as the ones in Anne Fontaine's "How I Killed My Father" (Comment j'ai tu‚ mon pŠre). The title, which is to be taken psychologically rather than literally, bears a traditional enough theme that of an outsider who intrudes on lives which are seem to be running smoothly, then points out the undercurrents which are eating away at them.
In the story co-written by Jacques Fieschi and the director and taking place on an affluent estate in Versailles, an outsider, the father (Michel Bouquet) of Jean-Luc (Charles Berling) and Patrick (Stephane Guillon) has abruptly returned from a long tenure doing good as a much-needed doctor in a developing African nation. Did I say doing good? If that were all there is to the situation, we'd have to say that Maurice, the dad, is the good guy. There is, however, a complication. Maurice had abandoned his family when Patrick was two years old and Jean- Luc was ten. Why? We don't know. Perhaps the 75-year-old father does not know himself. But his return after a long tenure away from home not only alters at least five lives in this touching (yet unsentimental) wonderfully theatrical piece but demands that we in the audience pondera few philosophic questions about responsibility, ambiguity, and the nature of familial relationships.
We are asked to look at the life of a doctor whose success as a gerontologist is spectacular but one who is clueless about his own defects (he's cold as ice) and the almost obscene way he relates to his gorgeous trophy wife Isa (Natasha Regnier), his kid brother Patrick (Stephane Guillon), and the Syrian-born assistant with whom he is carrying on an affair, Myriem (Amira Casar). Though both Maurice and his son are doctors of medicine, they have practiced at opposite ends of the spectrum, with Jean-Luc treating rich but not unhealthy people who want to slow down or even reverse their aging while Maurice has catered to third-world folks who desperately need his skills. I could not help thinking of the far-out views of Princeton University philosophy professor, Peter Singer, who holds that our responsibility to any individual anywhere in the world is no less than our duty to our own families at home.
The acting is superlative across the board, not unusual considering that Ms. Fontaine had at her disposal the magnificent seventy-six year old performer Michel Bouquet, who in fact wanted to be a doctor but quit school at the age of fifteen, winding up in complex roles, particularly in the films of Claude Chabrol.
Not Rated. Running time: 100 minutes. (C) 2002 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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