Love Like Poison

Dir: Katell Quillévéré

2010

**

Taking its title from Serge Gainsbourg’s "Un poison violent, c'est ça l'amour", Love Like Poison is another clumsy ‘coming-of-age’ film that has all the clichés you’d expect from a film of its ilk. Many will no doubt disagree but after many years writing about film I know my claret from my beaujolaise, when I say ilk, I mean your typical French film. I’m not knocking French cinema, far from it, but there are two types of French film; Good French films and French-French films. Released two months after the death of the great Éric Rohmer Katell Quillévéré’s exploration of childhood innocence and the fragility of adulthood is a far cry from the brilliance of the nouvelle vague and just seems like poor imitation. The same can be said about many European films made in the last twenty years but I don’t think anyone is calling these films out for what they are. Love Like Poison is an fine film that explores old-age issues that will always be relevant, I don’t have a problem with it in many respects, but I do have an issue with the formula and the never ending list of cliché. The film follows Anna, a 14-year-old girl spending the summer holidays with her mother in her grandfather's family home in Brittany. She comes home at the end of the school year to discover that her father has left and her mother is considering moving back with her parents on a permanent basis. No one wants to talk about her absent father and Anna, already a silent child, doesn’t ask too many questions. Here, it is assumed that the audience is on board and comfortable to follow the story through Anna’s eyes but personally I could not relate, not because I don’t know what its like to be a 14-year-old girl, but because we are never fully introduced to our protagonist. There isn’t any joy in the mystery either, I’m not at all suggesting that Clara Augarde isn’t a good actor, but here she is given next to nothing to work with. Anna’s grandfather is old and confined to his bedroom where he smokes and listens to old records. Anna’s mother is meanwhile going through a silent crisis, as both of them are religious, it feels as if Anna’s mother is hiding from her daughter, perhaps ashamed of herself and deeply embarrassed. Anna is also silently upset by the separation of her parents and, as if we hadn’t had enough clichés at this point, becomes close with all of the film’s male figures in the absence of a father. A local teenage boy is attracted with her and she reciprocates the attention. Despite her typical adolescence discomfort of her own body, she finds confidence in exploring her sexuality. Meanwhile, her grandfather, feeling he has little time left in this world, suggests that he’d like to see her genitalia before he dies. He doesn’t use the word genitalia, it’s written far more subtly and poetically than that, but he still asks to see his granddaughters bits. This is what I refer to when I say this is a French-French film. It’s one of those clichés that people will try to convince you is a misunderstanding and something people who don’t watch subtitled films say about foreign films but it’s true, French-French films are rife with this sort of thing. French existentialism is still the worst, just like most new British comedy is the worst comedy. Every country has their stereotype but every country has their own genuine cliché. I’m not sure it is a culture thing either, some styles just stick. Anna begins to show fainting spells at gatherings, totally put on of course. She becomes anxious about her impending confirmation and confides it with the priest, who it is discovered is one of her mother’s past lovers. She is torn between the unsympathetic world in front of her and her religious faith, but in the end she finds happiness by embracing her teenage emotions and asks out the local boy who is attracted to her, right after she shows her naughty bits to her grandfather who dies in his sleep that night. I liked the script but very little else, the clichés were just too much for me. The dying dirty old man, the lazy look at religious faith and the half-hearted exploration of adolescence and love just left me feeling tired. I’ve seen this film before, it was great when it first came out in the 60s and I enjoyed watching a re-envisioned version in the 70s and then again in the 80s. There were still elements of credit in the 90s versions but since then this type of film has become stale. While it might seem like an old-age tale, there really isn’t much to relate to and not much to get one’s teeth into either. As a whole the film is adequately directed with the odd flash of visual flare but for the most part it too is uninteresting and underwhelming. Each subject has been explored more creatively in recent years, most with far more tenderness and life. The film tries to make so many points and comparisons but every single one is lost in the biningety of it all. Like the decapitated chicken, it somehow still walks around for what seems like an eternity. I could comment that the film walks on Rohmer’s grave but to be honest that would be giving it too much credit.