Review of Stéphane Briese’s film “The (Not) Exes”

The melodrama “(Not) Exes” (Hors-saison) by French director Stéphane Brize, which participated in the main competition of the 2023 Venice Film Festival, has been released. Despite the fact that the film was left without awards, it is an example of smart and subtle “adult” cinema, referencing the classics, but remaining modern, he believes Julia Shagelman.

Stéphane Brize is a fairly frequent regular at European film festivals, where he usually brings social dramas that deal with the crisis of capitalism and how economic hardships weigh heavily on the shoulders of the small person, the “typical representative” of the working or middle class. Three of his films – “The Law of the Market” (2015), “At War” (2018) and “Another World” (2021), connected by these themes, as well as by the leading actor in each of them, Vincent Lindon, are even combined into an unofficial trilogy. Against this background, “(Un)Formers” – a chamber story played out for two people about a forgotten and resurgent feeling, where if there is a crisis, it is deeply personal, and not socio-political, – may surprise. However, in Brize’s filmography there were also films about late love, like “Mademoiselle Chambon” (2009) with the same Lindon, or the film adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel “La Vie” (2016) with all the required costumes and rural views. So the turn from public to private life is not so unexpected for him.

At first, this life barely glimmers, like the existence of a balneological resort on the seashore somewhere in Brittany during the low season (that’s the name of the film in the original). Here, in a half-empty luxury hotel (all an exquisite combination of white and gray, light wood and fluffy robes), the famous film actor Mathieu (Guillaume Canet) comes to undergo a course of thalassotherapy that he does not need, but in fact – to hide from the whole world after an acute attack of uncertainty in itself. Wanting to prove that he was capable of not only playing similar roles in films merging with each other, Mathieu decided to go on stage, but at the last moment, when the scenery was ready and glossy magazines excitedly announced the performance, he got scared and ran away.

Now he wanders aimlessly from one procedure to another, listening on the phone to the reproaches of the director, whom he let down with his prank, and the calm reasoning of his wife, a popular TV presenter (her voice on the phone is voiced by co-writer Marie Drucker), explaining to him that nothing terrible happened, but At her insistence, he tries to read scripts, but they offer him the same nonsense, formulaic police action films and empty-headed comedies. The first scenes of the film are shot with deadpan irony, and what makes them especially funny is the seriousness with which Cane’s character fights with a coffee machine that is too smart for him, dutifully takes a selfie with the hotel staff, opens and closes the automatic doors in his room with a remote control, or listens to a confused monologue from a fitness expert. coach (Hugo Dillon) about a bird of a rare endangered species he met on the way to a run.

Mathieu is brought out of his stupor by an unexpected message from his old friend Alice (Alba Rohrwacker), whom he has not seen for twenty years, and who coincidentally lives in this sleepy town. They meet in a cafe, exchange standard questions/answers about work and families – Alice teaches music to children and pensioners, she has a doctor husband (Sharif Andura), for whom she moved from Paris to the province, and a 14-year-old daughter (Emmy Boissard Pomel). From light chatter imbued with warm humor and a sense of recognition, from evasive omissions and sudden revelations, a picture of their common past gradually emerges: they were once a couple, then they separated, Mathieu all these years believed that this happened by itself, but Alice lived them with pain because he left her because she was not good enough for him, who was just on the threshold of great fame.

She clearly thought more than once about how life would have turned out if they had stayed together, but he is beginning to wonder about this question now, when his entire prosperous and successful biography seems to be a deception, which the public will soon figure out after the main character. Alice’s dissatisfaction with herself also turns out to be much deeper than just regret over a once unsuccessful romance. But besides the analysis of deeply hidden disappointments, there will be glances and touches, the further, the less random, and long walks along an empty beach to a piano soundtrack that makes you remember “A Man and a Woman” (1966) and all the elegant French melodramas in which beautiful people in stylish sweaters wander along the shore of the cold sea. And yet, free, not shy about long pauses and digressions (for example, a funny scene from the wedding of two wards of the nursing home where Alice works) Brize’s direction and the effortless, organic “chemistry” between Cane and Rohrwacker make this familiar story fresh, and filling it emotions are real and felt. Perhaps their experiences are not so important compared to the problems that worried the director in his other films, but here, at a quiet winter resort, they are the only ones that matter.