LE CINEMA DU PAPA : Mia Hansen-Løve’s ‘Father of My Children’ [7/10]

One of the best-reviewed films of Cannes 2009 is this sensitive, small-scale study of a family shattered by an entirely unexpected tragedy. Indeed, part of the point of the picture is that the audience should be almost as blindsided by said unexpected tragedy – which comes around the halfway point – as the surviving characters, making Father of My Children somewhat difficult to review.
   Suffice to say that the early stretches show episodes in the freewheeling existence of fortysomething independent film-producer Grégoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), a languidly scruffy-chic Parisien (reportedly based on the real-life producer Humbert Balsan) who juggles professional and family commitments with a certain degree of offhand Gallic aplomb. His latest production in Sweden is causing an unusual amount of gyp, even intruding on a rare holiday Grégoire manages to squeeze in with his Italian wife Sylvia (Chiara Caselli) and three doting daughters. But Grégoire has played this particular game for decades, with a certain degree of success – as we can tell by the starry names which adorn the (fictional) posters on his office walls.
   While not quite at the level of Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (1996), writer-director Hansen-Love unfussily evokes the genial chaos that is everyday Euro film-production – and she’s equally strong at crafting natural little vignettes of bohemian/artistic family life, in a manner that’s ineffably, charmingly “French.” She scores mainly on the basis of the pitfalls she avoids – there’s no melodrama, no histrionics, nothing is forced or calculated in what could easily have come across as a very high-tones soap-opera.
   Scenes from a marriage, scenes from a working life, then scenes from grief and emotional/financial chaos – impressive and absorbing in its detailing and utterly convincing in its atmosphere and performances. Overall and in retrospect, however, it’s all, somehow, a little slight, evanescent, perhaps even insubstantial…

Neil Young
3rd April, 2010

FATHER OF MY CHILDREN : [8/10]
Le père de mes enfants : Mia HANSEN-LØVE : Fr(/Ger) 2009 : 111m (BBFC) : {18/28}
seen 31st March 2010 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle (£7)