Directed by Maurice Pialat; Written by Maurice Pialat and Sylvie Danton
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Geraldine Pailhas, Antoine Pialat, Dominique Rocheteau, Fabienne Babe and Elisabeth Depardieu
Bluesy: Where was the booze when we really needed it? Both Irma Vep and Le Garcu offered an exquisite form of torture that made me want to run out to the nearest pub… an Irish pub. As much as I love French films and Depardieu, who, in the past I’ve always managed to find something to like about even in bad films, because he’s incredible to watch (I don’t care if he is overweight, he’s still sexy), this time really broke me down. I think I’d rather have my legs waxed, my eyebrows tweezed and my head shaved – simultaneously -- than have to sit through either of these films ever again.
Trap: Well, as far as Le Garcu went, I pretty much knew what I was in for – the Pialat films I’ve seen so far, such as "Loulou," "Police," and "Under Satan’s Sun," were relentlessly dreary chronicles of the sordid lives of unpleasant people. Irma Vep, on the other hand, while not particularly good, did have some redeeming features, I thought. Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung (Green Snake, The Heroic Trio), proves to be a good sport, at least, playing herself as the increasingly bewildered star of a collapsing production, and the scenes between her and Nathalie Richard, the costume designer who befriends her (as well as developing a crush on her), have an easy-going charm. And Jean-Pierre Leaud, the director of the film-within-a film, is quite funny -- fading “art” film maker who hopes to revive his flagging reputation by remaking Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 serial "Les Vampires," only to realize he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Problem was, once Leaud leaves, the picture pretty much loses its way. It flounders around for far too long and to no purpose before finally expiring ignominiously, like a joke without a punchline.
Bluesy: Trap, don’t tell me you fell for that “you make movies and therefor you must be interesting crap.” Movie-making is boring. Okay, not always, sometimes it’s fun, it’s creative, it’s exciting… for maybe the first day. By the second week of a shoot, everybody’s usually at each other’s throats, getting sick from lack of sleep, nauseous from eating second meals of pizza and fried chicken at 3am, irritated and irritable… and it becomes extremely boring (unless you’re the director or the producer, of course, then you’re busy having a nervous breakdown). The best thing I can say about Irma Vep was that it was extremely accurate. Then again, other than for recognition value, which lasts about 15 minutes… why would anybody want to live this sort of experience for over an hour and a half unless they were getting paid?
Movies about movie making are not the most fascinating subject material and, unless you bring something really unique to the fray… like maybe an actual STORY, as they had in films like “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” “Day for Night,” “The Player,” “Modern Romance” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” where the movie setting took backstage to something going on… why should anybody really care? (I will give Irma Vep credit for one scene – the first time I’ve seen a scene of a movie about filmmaking within a movie about filmmaking within a movie about filmmaking in a movie… THAT was cool, just for the novelty of it. But it only lasts a minute or so, better to hear about it secondhand than actually have to sit through the whole film for it).
Trap: Well, I certainly wouldn’t say that the film made any grand – or even terribly coherent – statements about Life vs. Cinema, and those had pretty much been made by the film’s half-way point. Still, it does have its small pleasures – there is even one scene which manages to hint at the eerily surreal atmosphere of the Feuillade serials – the one where late one night Cheung drunkenly dons her Irma Vep latex catsuit, and creeps stealthily through the corridors of her hotel (captured in a series of long, carefully-choreographed steadicam shots that heighten the dreamlike effect), eventually winding up burgling the room of a distracted American tourist (played by Arsinee Khanjian, the wife and leading lady of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan).
Le Garcu on the other hand is pretty much devoid of pleasures of any kind. The film is a difficult and uncompromising one, and while on a certain level I can appreciate Pialat’s refusal to make any concessions to his audience in pursuit of his vision, I’m not entirely convinced his vision is one worth pursuing in the first place. Broken down to its bare bones the story is a fairly simple one: Gerard (Gerard Depardieu) leaves his wife for another woman but remains emotionally tethered to her because of his love for their son. Pialat’s method of telling this story however, is perverse in the extreme: I had a hard time telling if the film was unfolding in chronological order, since there are virtually no expository scenes. Characters are introduced with no attempt to explain who they are, and what most people would consider key dramatic scenes (such as the one where Depardieu tells his wife about his affair) are omitted altogether – it’s as though he had made a much longer and more complete film, then simply pulled a few scenes from it at random and tacked them together.
Bluesy: I think your point about a filmmaker having a vision that, perhaps should stay between him and his shrink is well taken. I’ve heard Le Garcu is Pilat’s most personal, autobiographical film ever. He used situations he’s familiar with; locations he lives or has lived in; has been quoted as calling himself “misogynistic,” like the lead character of Gerard in the film (played by Gerard Depardieu, which really bugged me… I hate it when characters in films take on the same first names as their actors. Save that for the documentaries, please); he cast his own son as the whining little child who vacillated between cute and cloying, probably under direction from dear old dad, trying to hammer his theme of “the sins of the fathers are revisited on the son” or something… either that or he wanted us to feel the same way about the kid that the father, Gerard, did but I think it helps to actually bear the child before you find temper tantrums and endless play sessions with pail and shovel… precious.
But again, making any sense of Le Garcu is really stretching it for me. I’d summarize the plot… if only there was one. The whole thing reminded me of having to sit through the play by play of somebody’s dream -- you know, the type of thing where after 5 minutes you’re hoping the person realizes that the glaze in your eyes is NOT fascination about his personal revelation that he hated his mother, but instead some sort of zombie like trance under the facade of being awake and interested, just to be polite. Well, I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can be THAT polite for 106 minutes. It took everything I had not to stamp my feet and throw stale popcorn at the movie screen. Come to think of it, maybe there IS a reason for that kid to be so damn ornery. Maybe Le Garcu is one of those sensory sensoround-like films… incensoround… a film that makes people violently regress to temper tantrum-like annoyance at having paid good money to see the flick. Maybe it’s some new form of cheap therapy?
Trap: Perhaps -- after all, what are we left with at the end of the film? A wearying, practically incoherent portrait of a petty narcissist whose passive-aggressive hostility ultimately makes life miserable for those around him – an apt metaphor, perhaps for Pialat’s relationship with his audience, but hardly a film that repays the effort it takes to sit through it.
boring 
bearable
vile 
excruciating
