Neil Young’s Film Lounge – A Private Affair

Published on: March 23rd, 2004

A PRIVATE AFFAIR

6/10

Une Affaire Privee : France 2002 : Guillaume Nicloux : 101 mins

Une Affaire Privee may as well be called LAdieu Longue, so proudly does it brandish its allusions to The Long Goodbye. Once again, we have a hang-dog, anachronistically (even laughably) old-school private-eye who gets much more than he bargains for when he takes on a missing-persons case the characters even at one point fuzzily debate the legendary coke-bottle scene from the Altman classic. In the Elliott Gould role, its a pleasure to find Thierry Lhermitte breaking free from the shackles of Francis Veber farces to become Francois Maneri, a chain-smoking, womanising, fortyish divorcee, hired to investigate the disappearance of 22-year-old Parisian student Rachel. As Maneri questions Rachels relatives and friends including seductive best-pal Clarisse (Marion Cotillard) what gradually spirals out is a double (or even triple?) life of Laura Palmer-style complexity and darkness.

But as the clues, leads and connections pile up, it eventually becomes clear that writer-director Nicloux has higher ambitions than simply crafting yet another sexy, twisty crime thriller: this isn’t a film about detection, but deconstruction. In the final act, he stages an audacious coup which effectively throws the whole investigation back in Maneris face and ours. Nicloux chides him (and us) for thinking that 21st century lives are tidy things that can be decoded, unravelled and understood by conventional forms of narrative closure.

And its a kind of punishment, as well, so frustratingly are our expectations stymied. Because, up to the last five minutes, the film has been an absorbing experience skilfully shot and scored, with Eric Demarsans jazzy stylings, initially almost deafening, gradually fading through the course of the film until they’re almost minimalist by the time the elegant picture credits roll. Viewers can tick some major names on the French cinema scene whom Nicloux has slyly deployed in cameos, including a bemused Jeanne Balibar, an iron-pumping Samuel Le Bihan, dog-loving Philippe Nahon and well-scrubbed Bruno Todeschini. Balibar and Todeschini recently co-starred in Va Savoir!, and while Une Affaire Privee is, thankfully, much shorter than Rivettes arthouse marathon, its ultimately no less baffling and, on reflection, no less pleased with itself, especially its hazy cop-out of an ending.

August 21st, 2002
(seen 18th, Filmhouse Edinburgh Edinburgh Film Festival)

For all the reviews from the 2002 Edinburgh Film Festival click here.

by Neil Young

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