For this year's French Film Festival, Lydia, Cam and I went to watch Désaccord parfait/Twice Upon A Time. At first we were going to watch My Best Friend/Mon Meilleur Ami with Daniel Auteuil but Lydia read the programme wrong and we ended up with this one instead.
French director Louis Ruinard (Jean Rochefort) and English actress Alice d'Abanville (the always beautiful Charlotte Rampling) were a celebrity power couple of the 70s...kind of like Roger Vadim and Brigette Bardot/Catherine Deneuve/Jane Fonda in the 50s/60s/70s...but everything came to a screeching halt when Alice walked out and married Lord Evelyn Gaylord (Ian Richardson, R.I.P.). The movie starts up 30 years later when some British film institute wishes to award Louis a lifetime achievement award and they want Alice to present it to him. Sparks and verbal barbs fly whenever the two meet and slowly Louis comes to understand why Alice left, while she begins to realise that maybe she never stopped loving him.
I can't think of a description for this movie other than pleasant. It didn't blow me away - the story is pretty predictable and almost everyone apart from Rochefort and Isabelle Nanty was an English person speaking French. That was great for me because it often meant that it was spoken slowly enough for me to pick out if the subtitles were wrong, but it made me feel kind of ripped off as if the movie wasn't really 'French'. However, there were enough humourous parts that made me laugh out loud - it was great seeing Rochefort and Rampling spark off each other! And of course, the romantic in me liked watching two old people fall in love again. There was a bit of fear that, this being a French movie, we'd have to see Old People Having Sex, which we did, but the whole thing was very well done.
Script, sets, casts...everything was fine as far as I cared. Rampling and Rochefort had great chemistry and Richardson was a kindly husband who knows he was married out of spite (but understands), although it did feature one of the oldest looking 30 year olds I have ever seen (James Thiérrée) as Alice and Gaylord's son, Paul. My greatest complaint is that when the time came for the happily ever after, things just kidn of came to an abrupt halt. Oh well, can't win them all.
6.5/10
As a side note, I also found it amusing that this famous shot of Rampling by Helmut Newton played such a prominent part in this movie. Just a reminder of what an awesome babe she was (and some may say, still is!).
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