CLOTILDE HESME AND RAPHAËL PERSONNAZ IN THREE WORLDS Guild riddenPrevious films by Catherine Corsini that we've gotten a chance to see in New York are
Les ambitieux, "The Ambitious Ones," like the new one in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center but in 2007 -- I called it "a smooth French literary bedroom comedy" -- and the (in the US) generally released 2009
Leaving/Partir, best reviwed of these three in France, in which Kristin Scott Thomas plays a woman who throws her life away for a man she falls in love with. In
Three Worlds, Corsni raises the ante, working successfully in the thriller mode, and what's nice in a Rendez-Vous season that has had little to say about crime or morality, she delivers a full-on crisis of guilt: a man on the verge of achieving all good fortune flees from an accident in which someone is seriously injured and becomes trapped in this fatally wrong decision. This is a film that also paints in issues of class and privilege with a broad brush. Its momentum is lively.
The man is Al (Raphaël Personnaz), whose mother was a maid cleaning up the vast garage and car dealership where he is just about to assume the reins. In ten days he's marrying the boss's daughter. He has worked his way up and become a hotshot car salesman. He and two much lower ranking employees, longtime friends, have been drinking, the accident happens, he gets out, but then jumps back in, terrified, and drives off, egged on by his comrades, one of whom, Franck (Reda Kateb of Audiard's
A Prophet) in days to come proves forward and mocking.
The film features Arta Dobroshi of the Dardennes'
Lorna's Silence, who gives an intense performance as the injured man's Moldavian wife Vera.
We immediately see that a woman, Juliette (Clotilde Hesme of
Regular Lovers, NYFF 2005, and
Love Songs, R-V 2007 ), has witnessed the accident from her window. She is a pregnant medical student and her professor boyfriend is there, but sees nothing. She is responsible for calling the emergency services and eventually meets both Vera and Al. The "three worlds" are those of Al's working class origins (he's a star car salesman now general manager), the bourgeois milieu to which Juliette belongs, and the threatened, shaky world of illegal immigrants.
Al becomes ridden with guilt, and also uncomfortable with the dubious practices of his new father-in-law Testaud (Jean-Pierre Malo), under all this pressure, no longer excited about marrying Testaud's daughter, Marie (Adèle Haenel of
Water Lilies, not given much to do here). Everything becomes very frantic, and while this isn't as tightly put together as
Leaving/Partir, the chiseled Personnaz, a very busy actor these days, conveys through a kinetic and sexy performance the sense of a man whose world is coming apart, and this is the important place where the film excels. The screenplay by Corsini and Benoît Griffin may tie too many knots and contain implausible moments, but despite its conventionality it wisely leaves things blank at the end and makes of Al a complex protagonist. Clotilde Hesme provides good balance, bringing both restraint and complexity to this, for her, more conventional and mainstream role. And despite so-so reviews, here is an example of how the French can make a classy mainstream thriller, and a moral thriller with echoes of
Dirty, Pretty Things to boot, and a variation on the Hitchcockisn theme of the innocent man who's found guilty. Al isn't an innocent man, but he has been up till his terrible mistake, and the film makes him sympathetic almost to a fault. For a minute I thought even the victim's wife was going to come on to him.
Trois mondes debuted at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard series, and opened in Paris December 5, 2012, with decent French reviews (Allociné press rating 3.2 based on 19 reviews). French critics admired the momentum and social complexity and the skill with actors, but pointed out that the film made its points too schematically. A Film Movement release. Screened for this review as part of the joint Unifrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, showing Mar 5, 6, and 7, 2013 at two NYC locations. This is the New York premiere.
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