Les Voleurs
André Téchiné, France, 1996, 116 mins, Tartan
Review by Gerald Houghton (1998)
In which veteran French director Téchiné hooks up with Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil for the first time since 1993’s affecting chamber piece, Ma Saison Preferee. Actually, that’s not saying so very much, since this film (the title means Thieves, incidentally) has been kicking its heels for a couple of years now since its Cannes bow. It’s hard to see why, though, given the strength of its performances, the ambition of its structure and casual brilliance of its direction. Maybe we could lay that at the door of it being so, well, pessimistic?
It opens on a young boy (the creepy Julian Riviere) awoken by his mother’s scream. And she’s screaming, not unnaturally, because crim-hubby Ivan (Didier Bezace) has just been brought home with a bullet through his eye. Later the family convene in the mountains and are visited by the dead man’s brother Alex (Auteuil), a jaded Lyon cop. Flash back to the previous year, to Alex and sluttish shoplifting student Juliette (Laurence Cote) - all crotch-length dresses and petulant smoking. He lets her off and the two begin an exclusively sexual affair, Alex sharing his flaky lover with her lesbian university professor Marie (Deneuve). Juliette and her brother Jimmy (Benoit Magimel) are also in ‘business’ with Ivan.
This screenplay, by Techine and Giles Taurand, is a slippery thing. Many will find the leaps in time and character irksome as they look for some emotional engagement. We only really find that in Auteuil’s exhausted performance, with Deneuve particularly maddening as the stately but essentially unknowable Marie. It’s not for nothing that we first discover her name when the waifish Juliette tugs down her panties to show Alex a strategically placed tattoo. The film treats the lesbian affair with a great deal more tenderness and respect than its brutish heterosexual couplings.
And given that the film’s advertising wants to make much of the Deneuve-Auteuil thing, some will lose patience with just how little screen-time the two share. How little any two characters share: this is a film with little time for cinematic niceties. Which is all to the good most of the time, lending it an edgy, disconnected feel. It’s about characters more than events, with the bungled car theft our springboard. Unfortunately, though, once we get past the wonderfully staged heist itself, the film tails off into a half-dozen possible climaxes, diluting its authority. It’s a good ten minutes too long.
Still, for the most part this is an elegant if densely made film (the sort no one in this country could conceive of, let alone make), with a stand-out showing from the sour-faced Auteuil, easily now one of the world’s finest screen actors. Not the very best of its kind, but light years ahead of most of the competition.