Four years after making Milena Agus’ best seller, ‘Mal de piedra’, with ‘Gabriele’s dream’, the French director Nicole Garcia made her ninth feature film as a director, “The Lovers”which arrives in commercial theaters two years after its passage in the Official Selection of the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival, a leap from the comfort zone of the director and actress, who dares with the thriller.
‘Lovers’ is the story of a love that ends up resulting in an ambivalent and unstable bond. Divided into three episodes, Garcia, who also signs the screenplay together with Jacques Fieschi, configures a cold passion that shows Lisa, a protagonist who tries to rekindle in her heart a flame of which not even the ashes remain, even if mentally she feels that there is ‘and and. . It is interesting how the filmmaker represents this disenchantment, linked to the disappointment of love but which ends up poisoning every aspect of her life.
Proof of this is the change in Lisa’s gaze, which in the first episode, set in Paris, is a young woman full of illusions, studying hospitality and living with her boyfriend, Simon, of the same age, who earns a living like a camel. An incident with a client causes separation and disappointment in love and it is here that the young woman, beautifully played by Stacy Martin, he sees his face change to a more distant expression, the one he ends up having in the rest of the film. Garcia runs his feature film in three timelines, a successful move to show the more extreme consequences of heartbreak.
Dance of feelings in the middle of heartbreak
The other two episodes are the ones that surprise and bring this romantic drama on the road to a thriller. The first, set three years later, places the protagonists in the Indian Ocean, is married to a rich millionaire and meets him again, who works as a hotel waiter. Here Garcia avoids the classic reunion of an impossible love story, turning her into an icy woman, devoted to the economic tranquility provided by her husband. It is fascinating how the filmmaker outlines a pragmatic protagonist, far from what one would expect from a film of this style.
In the end, the last episode, set in Geneva, is where Garcia puts this obsessive love triangle in front of the mirror, in which Pierre Niney and Benoît Magimel also dazzle. The former carefully defends the role of a boy who lives too much in the present, a bad influence and who sees how his beloved ends up being the last of his shoe. On the other hand, there is Magimel, who knows how to convey the feeling of wounded masculinity, that of a millionaire man who has had everything except the truth.
Garcia’s foray into thriller is notable, even if he ends up immersing himself in the melodrama he knows so well. ‘Lovers’ is the deconstruction of the love triangle, with three protagonists who end up being the opposite of what is expected of them. With a magnificent trio of actors; a cold photograph (like the character of Lisa), by Christophe Beaucarne; a magnetic production design, signed by Thierry Flamand; an exquisite soundtrack, composed by Grégoire Hetzel, ‘Lovers’ ends up being an elegant, suggestive and hypnotic proposal.
Note: 7
The best: The portrait of the emotional orphan of the character of Stacy Martin.
Worse: The final twist is too violent.
Source: E Cartelera
