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Après lui
2007 Drama
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Credits
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Director: Gaël Morel
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Script: Christophe Honoré, Gaël Morel
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Photo: Jean-Max Bernard
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Music: Louis Sclavis
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Cast: Catherine Deneuve (Camille),
Thomas Dumerchez (Franck),
Guy Marchand (François),
Élodie Bouchez (Laure),
Elli Medeiros (Pauline),
Luis Rego (Le père de Franck),
Adrien Jolivet (Mathieu),
Salim Kechiouche (Le serveur au concert),
Julien Honoré (L'écrivain),
Amina Medjoubi (La mère de Franck),
Catarina Wallenstein (Maria)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 90 min
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Aka: After Him
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Summary
When her son Mathieu is killed in a road accident, Camille finds that
her entire world is turned inside out. So deep is her sense of
loss that the only person she can turn to for support is Mathieu’s best
friend, Franck, who was responsible for his death. Only
Franck, tormented by guilt, seems to understand and share her grief -
neither her husband nor her daughter are of any comfort to
her. But Camille’s interest in Franck soon turns into a
very morbid kind of obsession..,
Review
Gaël Morel has come a long way since his acting film début in
André Téchiné’s evocative coming-of-age drama Roseaux sauvages (1994). À toute vitesse (1996)
marked the auspicious beginning of his career as a film director.
He has since directed four films, including a television drama. Après lui, his latest film,
confirms Morel’s reputation as one of the most promising auteur filmmakers of his generation.
Après lui is a pretty
cheerless drama in which a grieving mother tries to come to terms with
the premature death of her grown-up son. This immediately brings
to mind Nanni Moretti’s excellent 2001 film, The
Son’s Room, but Gaël Morel’s treatment of the subject
could hardly be more different. In his film, the son appears only
briefly in the film’s introduction, and is then snatched away from
us. The loss which his mother then experiences is vicariously
transferred to the spectator in a way that is both subtle and brutal -
through a combination of a very subdued cinematic style and a
spectacularly intense performance from the film’s star, Catherine
Deneuve.
Denueve needs no introduction. She has graced cinema screens for
five decades, during which time she has worked with some of the world’s
greatest directors and made a huge contribution to the international
appeal of French cinema. Now well into her sixties (not that you
would ever notice), this iconic actress has lost none of her charm and
ability to engage with an audience. Après lui is a film that
seems to have been tailor-made for Deneuve and allows her to turn in
one of her best performances for years. Watching Deneuve in
this film is a truly moving and cathartic experience; anyone who has
suffered the loss of a loved one will sympathise immediately with
the character she portrays with such authenticity.
Catherine Denueve’s tour de force performance only accounts for half of
film’s impact, however. The other half lies in a
well-crafted screenplay (which Morel co-authored with Christophe
Honoré, another promising young filmmaker) and the way in which
Morel constructs the narrative, cutting back on stylistic excess and
eschewing implausible plot developments in favour of an almost cinéma vérité style of realism. The story he tells is
poetically simple, unpretentious and devastatingly effective.
© James Travers 2008
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