Wild Grass (*1/2)

People who don’t watch foreign films sometimes think of them as pretentious and difficult. It isn’t especially true. There are all kinds of foreign films, as there are all kinds of American films. However, this French film is pretentious and difficult. The omniscient narration and the way director Alain Resnais shows the characters, initially, from the back, mark this as an art film. There is a sequence in which much is made of a redhead (Sabine Azéma) purchasing a pair of shoes, only to have to return them for the cash as her purse is suddenly snatched after she leaves the store. Neither the shoes nor her need for cash figures in the story in the slightest way, although the snatched purse does.

Here we come to the other primary character, a gentleman in late middle-age (André Dussollier), a long-married man whose mind seems (as indicated by interior monologues) riddled with stray thoughts, piques over imagined slights, and, lately, a longing to know the redhead whose wallet he’s found in a parking garage. He worries that his thoughts will cause him to lose control, as he once did. Even after returning the wallet, he writes to her. He practices conversation with her. In short, he’s pretty creepy. Her irritated initial reaction is as expected, but the arty touches and the cool, pleasant jazz on the soundtrack are a clue that this won’t be a stalker drama.

So far, so good. There are enough stalker dramas. But when her behavior becomes as bizarre as—and a little less comprehensible than—his, then for me intrigue became irritation. Perhaps the movie is all the man’s fantasy, but if so the narrative thread is too frayed for me. Here’s one example. At one point, the redhead calls the man’s wife and says that she needs to talk to her. We see that they talk, but not what was said. (Nor is it apparent what she would have needed to say.) I confess to having seen none of the dozens of features octegenarian Resnais has made since 1946, so I cannot say whether this is typical of his work. (The two screenwriters have only a couple of credits.) Perhaps the novel he adapted can be blamed. However, something more needs to have been explained for me to have enjoyed this. It’s not that the narrative is difficult to follow, only that as the movie went on the characters’ behavior made less sense, even as a fantasy. I don’t mind if something is left to the imagination, so long as I could possibly imagine something reasonable. Here, I couldn’t. And if romantic whimsy is intended, then the characters should really be more fun to spend time with.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 7/21/2010