LA BUCHE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Empire Pictures Director: Daniele Thompson Writers: Christopher Thompson, Daniele Thompson Cast: Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Claude Rich, Francoise Fabian, Christopher Thompson, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Daniele Thompson is a clever writer. His script for "Cousin, Cousine" a quarter century ago--about two people married to others who become cousins by marriage and go beyond the kissing stage--was a piercing comedy of the sort with which the French excel. Then his longer "Queen Margot," a huge production based on the Dumas novel of events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 16th Century Frnace, boasted strong performances by Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil together with striking decor. His first feature film as a director, though, is a disappointment. "La Buche," which means "yule log" in English, focusses on a family's rituals on the days immediately preceding Christmas--the holiday which is supposed to be the happiest of the year but which most of know often serves as a display of celebrants' bitter disappointments, frustrations, and depression.
Billed as a comedy--though more like what we'd call a family drama--La Buche is in the director's words a summoning of "the influences of those who make me laugh and cry: Oury, Sautet, Allen Capra." While he declares that he also "wanted to make a movie unlike any other, even unlike the ones I love," he overstates his ambition because while "La Buche" is well above the level of a TV tale, the mingling of the characters' loves and losses are neither compelling nor unique. The screenplay by the director and Christopher Thompson does not give major French performers like the lovely Emmanuell Beart and the energetic Sabine Azema much for us to care about. These are for the most part bourgeois people who appear so insular that events outside their immediate circle appear to have no impact on them. They are wrapped up in their petty memories, and those recollections may not prove especially inviting to their movie audience.
Not that these personalities are poorly developed. Through the usual fixation of French film makers on talk talk talk, we learn plenty about them. Louba (Sabine Azema) is the most vigorous, a singer of those Russian songs that are performed over and over to tourists, the types of folks who might go to Ireland hoping to hear "Danny Boy" yet another time as though the Emerald Isle produced nothing else of import. When she is not singing and dancing or chasing the franc by giving Russian lessons during the day, she is enjoying an affair with the married Gilbert (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) who (guess what) is not about to leave his wife and kids. Sonia (Emmanuelle Beart) is not the sort of person we can sympathize with, though she is on the verge of a breakdown as she undergoes a painful divorce. She's rich, beautiful, and spoiled, even smashing a bottle of champagne on the floor while conducting a tantrum. Charlotte Gainsbourgh plays the standard-issue gamin, the young sister who simply cannot come to terms with Christmas as the holiday makes her face the loneliness she covers up during the rest of the year.
All of the situations and memories of this family are fairly typical of quite a few of the world's middle-class people, though the Parisians like to think that their affairs are uniquely French. If the people in the tale do not inspire, at least Robert Fraisse's camera spotlights a colorful City of Lights at holiday time, its stores crammed with an abbondanza of gifts.
Not Rated. Running time: 106 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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