Arnaud Desplechin loves stories the ones you show on a screen, the ones people regale others with that reveal delusions and dreams, the ones we tell ourselves in order to survive. A French filmmaker whos given us some of the warmest and most eccentric movies to come out of that country (My Sex Life or How I Got Into an Argument, Kings and Queen, A Christmas Tale), hes a director who loves to pile incident upon incident, propelling his characters from one dramatic pivot point to the next in the name of wreaking emotional havoc. He tells humanistic tales that can veer into profound and profoundly odd territory even a corseted period piece like Esther Kahn (2000) ends up serving its unhinged heroine a meal of broken glass. Cups are guaranteed to runneth over.
Desplechin is also a big fan of meta-feints and parries, which is why his latest movie Ismaels Ghosts starts off as a spy thriller with Louis Garrel, he of the first-rate Picasso mug, being groomed by an intelligence-agency bigwigs to infiltrate some international circle of no-goodniks. Soon, we find out that all of this is happening in the mind, and on the laptop, of one Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric), a filmmaker in full boho-disheveled work mode. Some 21 years ago, his wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) disappeared; neither he nor his father-in-law (Lszl Szab), also a celebrated director, know what happened or why. Eventually, Ismael meets a new woman, Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Life goes on, years pass, bliss returns. Then one day, a woman walks up to Sylvia on the beach. She introduces herself as Carlotta. Shes wondering if her husband is home.
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There are love triangles and more espionage shenanigans and backstage fretting, sorrow and madness, exploding phones and a sex scene involving two people undressing each other in fragmented close-ups that isnt hot so much as straight-up molten. The title references Moby Dick, somewhat; youll also find Afrika Bambattas Peace, Love, and Having Fun trading off with Bernard Hermanns score for Marnie on the soundtrack, as well as explicit/implicit shout-outs to Vertigo (Cotillards character is not called Carlotta for nothing) and Philip Roth and The Interpretation of Dreams. The writer-director has long been a huge hip-hop fan he had Roxanne Shante cut a track for his previous movie, 2015s My Golden Days and often adopts a sample-ready style of layering bric-a-brac into his various storylines. But Desplechin is not a pastiche artist so much as a filmmaker who likes giving his characters passionate obsessions and digs getting drunk off their narrative digressions a condition that becomes contagious when you watch his work.
And my god, does he love actors. His longtime screen avatar Mathieu Amalric, whos also a first-rate filmmaker (track down his theres-no-business-like-show-business romp Tourne if youve never seen it) and a performer that always looks like hes just starting a three-day bender or just finishing one, goes through Ismaelsamour fou paces like a champ. Charlotte Gainsbourg gets to put her regal bearing and inherent vulnerability to good use.Szab, a veteran of Godards early movies, gets a great scene that involves railing against airline personnel and anti-Semitism; Cotillard gets an even better one involving her dancing to Bob Dylans It Aint Me Babe. (The use of the song is both too on the nose and somehow totally perfect.) So often, this preternaturally talented actress is simply asked to be Pretty Mystery Lady when shes recruited for Hollywood movies. Desplechin gives her chance to run the gamut from guilty to breezy here, and its a gift to Cotillard and us.
Out of sympathy with its lead character,Ismaels Ghosts eventually goesoff the rails around the same time Ismael himself does, constantly toggling between the movie within the movie and his own mental unraveling. As with all of Desplechins work, you need to embrace the chaos of his story about the past never being done with us and let it work its messy magic on you. And like most of the directors work, the end result a sort of melodramatic free-for-all shot out of cannon that inspires a sense of cinematic euphoria is completely worth it.
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