... and while you're about it save the plot. I am always going to see anything Isabelle Huppert does. She is far and away the finest French actress currently working and few international actresses can touch her but she does have a wilful side and in the last few years seems drawn to anything from off-the-wall (as here) to sleaze (Deux, The Piano Teacher) so fans don't have it easy and given her current track record we can only assume 8 Femmes was an aberration. This is a case of style over content, everything hinges on the unrealistic premise of Huppert saying 'okay' when she should have said 'get a life' as ninety nine mothers out of a hundred WOULD do in similar circumstances. It's not really enough to pepper the cast with certifiable nannys and neighbors because that only makes the SEMI intelligent viewer shout WHY. Why does Huppert continue to employ a nanny/au pair who declines to eat as one of the family and is constantly throwing dice which always turn up 7 and neglecting the nine year old when they are out together. Why, for that matter, does Huppert's brother, a psychiatrist, no less, become disturbed if anyone touches his toys (Huppert has inherited the family home, where she and her brother grew up, from her parents and the brother's toys are still stored there), given that Huppert has, by definition, lived in Paris all her life and that Paris is a very compact city, why is she TOTALLY unfamiliar with other arrondisiments other than the one in which she lives, why, when Huppert, a total stranger, calls on Jeanne Balibar only to find her out, does Balibar's neighbor, who has a key, cheerfully let this stranger into her neighbor's apartment (perhaps 'cheerfully' is the wrong word, given the neighbor's penchant for gloomy predictions. I could go on but you get the picture. As long as we're asking pertinent questions, why did Denis Podalydes, an established and respected actor, agree to what is little more than a cameo, and why, for that matter, even ask a well-known actor when an unknown would do. On the credit side Huppert is tremendous and Balibar not far behind but it's Class Acting that feels like an Acting Class and not a movie.
Review of Comedy of Innocence
