writers_reign
As first feature films by French Female Directors go this is right up there with La Buche, Il Est plus facile pour une chameau, Parlez-moi d'amour, Se Souvenirs des belles choses and Le Gout des autres and it may be no coincidence that Anne Le Ny acted in the last three and clearly kept her eyes and ears open. This is a very assured debut with traces of Brief Encounter and Rien a Faire and just as Noel Coward provided interesting and solid support for the protagonists of Brief Encounter so Le Ny surrounds her German teacher and graphic artist with the proprietress of a magazine-stand and her assistant and a sister and step-daughter for the male protagonist. Le Ny herself plays Nathalie, the caring sister of Betrand and throws in a lovely moment involving Nathalie's baby son and a second involving her older daughter that illustrate just how firm is her grasp of this ultimately bittersweet love story. Manu Devos and Vincent Lindon do everything asked of them and more and the whole thing has the feel of a labour of love from all concerned. Try not to miss it.
Chris Knipp
Chraccter actress Anne Le Ny makes a creditable directorial debut with this story about a man and a woman who connect in a hospital where their significant others are cancer patients and they are daily visitors. As Bertrand and Lorraine, the excellent Vincent Lindon and Emmannuelle Devos are together again as they were two years ago in Emmanuel Carrère's La moustache. To Le Ny's credit she dares not to show any patients or doctors, tears, flashbacks, or scenes of working life, though she does fall into a couple of clichés otherwise.The first meeting is obvious enough. Bertrand, a German teacher whose afternoons are free for these visits, encounters a flustered Lorraine on her first time at the hospital dropping a file of papers and unable to find the ward where her boyfriend's bed is. Far from the attentive mate with the tireless bedside manner, she's not sure she's ever going to be able to cope if she winds up with a boyfriend who has permanent damage from colon cancer. Bertrand is so wise, patient, and long-suffering it comes to bug her. But that comes later.At first, they simply meet again and have coffee at the cafeteria. They also get to know the ladies at the newsstand/gift shop where Bertrand regularly gets a certain magazine for his wife. She's been in and out of hospitals for five years with breast cancer. He lives with a teenage stepdaughter Valentine (Yeelem Jappain), who detests him and continually makes excuses not to come see her mom.We know less about Lorraine except that she's a graphic designer who's scatterbrained and wholly unready for the role of Mother Teresa. And she has an automobile, and since Bertrand has a long bus and train ride to get home, she gives him a lift back to Paris in her car. And that, of course, becomes the routine.The day comes when Bertrand and Lorraine do more than keep each other company; when they begin to go to the hospital to see each other. And that becomes complicated. Bertrand has a longtime commitment to his wife. Lorraine's relationship is newer, and she balks at her new role with her boyfriend. But that may not show who most needs the other.Le Ny herself plays Nathalie, Bertrand's over-helpful sister, who comes with husband Jean-Paul (Grégoire Oestermann) and baby boy to stay over for a bit with Bertrand and Valentine. This interlude helps keep the Bertrand-Lorraine coupling from being too fast, too romantic, or too intense. over-helpful sister, who comes to visit w It always remains an uncertain thing, a stop-gap perhaps, a comfort in time of need. They meet in a state of limbo. Their relationship is predicated on that state.One wouldn't expect a story like this to be fun and it certainly isn't. Unfortunately though it does present an interesting dilemma and sensibly avoids any easy or sentimental solutions, I'm not wholly convinced it goes deep enough to justify ninety minutes of our time. Lindon and Devos are two of the best actors in current French films; they do not disappoint-- and deserve respect for taking on a hard subject. But their talents might have been better used if the script had given them more interesting dialogue and more emotional range. Devos only gets to be eager, confused, and superficial, and Lindon spends all his time in a deep funk. This is an actor who is capable of a great deal more than glum determination. Understandable, no doubt, that his character should primarily exhibit that manner; but the writing doesn't allow either character to develop much, even when the inevitable happens and the statuses of their hospitalized significant others finally change in ways that force their hand with each other. The principal irony is that Bertrand and Lorraine obviously like each other a lot, enough so their feelings for each other peep out despite the heavy fog of duty, grief, and annoyance they live in every day--and so, dismal as their daily returns to the hospital are, or were, something in each of them resists the development that will lead away from the hospital--recovery, or death--or toward a more positive existence. Limbo can be curiously addictive.Le Ny wisely avoids any trite resolution; but that leaves things rather flat. When something is rounded off--stepdaughter Valentine's hostilities--it's done in a way that's a bit too sweet and articulate for a sixteen-year-old--particularly this one. And the stopover for the carnival and the cotton candy is too cute and American rom-com for a piece that strives for grit as this does, and has no beauty in its extremely utilitarian locations otherwise, even in the evening arrivals in Paris.Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, New York, February 29-March 9, 2008. It opened in Paris August 29, 2007.
guy-bellinger
Is it possible to make a movie about cancer without ever showing … the patients or the doctors?Anne Le Ny's answer to the question is yes. With "Ceux qui restent" she has done just this and it may well be the first film to use such an audacious device. Better known as a supporting actress in many a French flick, Le Ny demonstrates with this first work written and directed by her, how multi talented she is. "Ceux qui restent" is both original in its approach to a difficult subject and genuinely moving.The subject is not how-horrible-it-is-to be-struck-by-cancer, complete with pathetic violin music accompaniment, but the less often asked question of what it feels like to be the companion or the child or of a cancer patient . Therefore what I called a device (never showing the patients themselves or the doctors who treat them) is in fact not an aesthetic gimmick but a sheer necessity.For it is true that those around the patient do suffer as well. Bertrand, the German teacher, because his wife is dying after a five-year battle against breast cancer; Valentine, his stepdaughter who can't stand the prospect of visiting her own mother, now a mere shadow of her former self; Lorraine, the young graphic designer, who wonders whether she will be able to become her lover's nurse for the rest of their lives. The basic situation is further complicated by the characters having difficulty in communicating: Bertrand with his stepdaughter and vice versa, Bertrand with Lorraine and Lorraine with herself.Reading these lines might incite the reader to shy away from the film. They should be reassured though. Anne Le Ny is not an adept of cheap pathos or long sententious lines about life and death. On the contrary she has a knack for making light what is profound or harrowing. She has a knack for instilling distance, humor and colorful details (such as the "nougat picking" episode), thus making the unbearable bearable.The actors also help to ease the tension inherent in the subject. Vincent Lindon, perfect as the uptight, uncommunicative Bertrand, is ideally teamed with his exact opposite, Emmanuelle Devos, as his hypersensitive, hyper-confused (and a bit loony) brief-encounter-like partner. Le Ny's first work as writer director is a real achievement. A delicate film on a delicate subject.
