It
is not hard to recognize a film by Arnaud Desplechin as it is
set in his own universe full of recurring motives: first names like
Ismaël, Ivan, Faunia and even Esther (here as a pseudonym), last
names Vuillard and Dedalus, themes of diplomacy and espionage in the
background, character motivation via broken family relations and
loved-unloved son antics, manic pixie dream girls and mystery women
popping out, locations of post-Soviet Tajikistan, different
post-communist Eastern European capitols and Desplechin’s hometown
of Roubaix. The trouble with Ismaël’s Ghosts is that the
whole thing does not add up even with the structure of the film
within a story about the title character (played by Desplechin
regular Matthieu Amalric) trying to make one.
Ismaël
Vuillard is a filmmaker in personal and professional crisis, trying
to wrap up the film that honors his brother Ivan (almost
unrecognisably short-haired Louis
Garrel), a diplomat that he presents as an unintentional rockstar
spy while battling the titular ghosts. One of them is his real-life
brother, as we learn a regular Quai d’Orsay official in Ethiopia,
and the other is his wife Carlota, the daughter of his friend and
mentor Henri Bloom (László Szabó), a woman he married when
she was very young who disappeared two decades ago. Troubled,
chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, pill-popping Ismaël is now in a
relationship with intelligent, down to Earth astrophysicist and our
occasional narrator Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg), but it does
not help him with his nightmares. The sudden appearance of Carlota
(played by delightful Marion Cotillard) trying to get her
spouse back derails his life completely so he goes full 8½ in
his dead great-aunt’s house in his hometown while his producer
friend Zwy (legendary Hyppolite Girardot) is chasing him and
his actress Faunia (Alba Rohrwacher) haunts him in his
dreams...
It
does not make much sense, does it? However, the reason Ismaël’s
Ghosts was selected to open last year’s Cannes could not be
clearer: with such stellar cast (in French context as well as
global), it is really red carpet-friendly. The cast is probably the
strongest reason that such a mess of ideas, recycled and
under-developed, that pretends to be a film is still watchable, even
in the re-edited, 20 minutes longer and tighter theatrical cut. (The
festival version eluded me. Not sure if it is a bad thing, though.)
And I thought that Michael Haneke’s Happy End was a
bit off in the sense of blending the filmmaker’s earlier work
together...
Still,
Desplechin did whatever he was doing here with commendable style. The
dialogue has overly melodramatic tones throughout, but does not feel
over-written. The score composed of original and source material is
superb. And all those dollies, zooms, double exposures and rear
projections simulate mystery and add a layer of drama very well and
show that Desplechin’s ideas on the technical level are concise
even when the ones on the narrative level are not. And even there one
can find some enjoyable bits and pieces.
In
the end, maybe it is all autobiographical. Maybe he had to make this
film to drive out his own ghosts. Certainly, it demands a re-watch,
but I am not sure if it deserves it.
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