It's amazing what a good director, a superb leading actor, and a fine cameraman can do with a subject that is arguably targeting a specialised audience. By now Francois Cluzet and Guillaume Canet are old hands at the game with three or four collaborations under their collective belt, including the outstanding ne le dis a personne (Tell No One) which Canet adapted and directed from the novel by Harlan Coben and in which Cluzet played the lead (with Canet himself taking a small role). This time around Cluzet gets the lion's share of screen time after deputising for the injured Canet in a round-the-world yacht race for solo sailors. Back in the fifties Billy Wilder, shooting The Spirit of St Louis, which was primarily about Charles Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic, solved the problem of too much screen time with just one actor (James Stewart) by introducing a fly into the confined - and sealed - cockpit and allowing Stewart to talk to it. Things move on in fifty years and Cluzet soon discovers a stowaway, anxious to get to France, once he leaves the Canaries. As usual the resident misanthrope at films de France has trashed another fine film but trust me, watch it anyway.
Review of Turning Tide
