Don't Believe the Hype

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Benoit Jacquot helped to make a star out of Huppert, so that he had no trouble raising the funds for this utter turkey. Huppert's character (who has several names) acts as if, in the words of her lady friend in Sardinia (or wherever it is), she is on another planet. She seems repelled by the idea of heterosexual activity, and director Jacquot fails to depict an apparent lesbian love affair either. She's not interested in almost anything except the very big view from her shack on top of a mountain. The rest of the film is about her stripping herself of everything only to meet her long-lost father, who is interestingly depicted by Peter Arens. He suggests an entirely different route this movie could have taken, with interesting characters and a lively story, instead of the opposite. Huppert depicts a musician (classical piano) who makes frightful modernistic screechings (apparently composed and played by Huppert herself). We can only congratulate her for giving up her concert career, including the pretence that she is playing from musical notation. This picture essentially depicts an everyday fantasy: escaping from it all. And this is where it leads, to a purposeless, futile movie that wastes everyone's time. Don't bother with it.

Apart from the fact that she is light years the better actor of the two Isabelle Huppert is in some ways the French Michael Caine in that neither appears capable of turning down any film offered to them no matter how unsuitable, mediocre, or down-and-out rubbish it actually is. As a result both actors have more dross than gold on their CVs although again Huppert has much more gold than Caine, who has arguably more dross on his own CV than any actor alive or dead with the possible exception of Alan Lake and Maxwell Reed. This time around Huppert is playing a certified ding-dong, a woman so out of touch with reality and real life that all it takes is the witnessing of one kiss - not foreplay, not heavy petting, merely a kiss - to make her decide there and then to abandon everything she has achieved in life, career, home, relationship, and get as far away from her life so far as she can. Huppert is, of course, a sublime actress and I for one am prepared to watch her in anything - I said 'prepared' rather than 'happy' advisedly. Villa Amalia is like a Rohmer movie in which we not only WATCH paint drying but THINK about watching paint dry. Any viewer who was frightened as a child by logic will suffer acute distress when, having wound up in Ischia more by luck than judgment and with only one person knowing her whereabouts, the father who abandoned her forty years before turns up out of the blue and immediately recognizes someone he saw last when she was barely more than an infant. This is only one example of the directors' contempt for the audience. Huppert is in every single scene and that's about the only positive thing we take away with us.

Dreamy, existential drama primarily that works because of the presence of Isabelle Huppert. She plays Ann, a concert pianist who is betrayed by her lover. By way of retort she sells up and hits the road, intending to 'disappear' and forge a new identity. Her destination is wherever the day takes her, though it turns out to be Italy. This isn't convincing in the least, her idea seems more illusory than a firm commitment, though maybe that's the point. Antonioni pulled off this trick in The Passenger by locating its alienated journalist in Morocco. Ann obliquely refers to this when she observes that "Tangiers is an easy place to disappear in". There are other pleasures the film offers notably the superb performance by Huppert, she's never off-screen during the entire film and you never want her to be.

I was looking forward to seeing this story of a woman escaping her former life and creating a new one as it sounded brilliant and filled with potential, especially with Isabelle Huppert playing the lead role of Ann.Unfortunately, almost everything that could go wrong with the movie does. Let's start with the direction, which is self-indulgent and completely ineffective. There is some good cinematography here, but absolutely no purpose behind it. The use of music is inelegant, clashing with the scenes. We jump from one scene to the other with no sense of pacing or of a bigger picture, much like a bad artsy flick from the 70s. Isabelle Huppert, usually a solid actress, barely attempts to instill any emotion and seems content to go through the motions. The worse performance I have seen of her. Every other actor that appears in Villa Amalia is even worse, with the exception of Jean-Hughes Anglade, who breathes some life to Georges. Alas, the script doesn't give much to work with and with such poor direction, even Anglade is forgettable. The story absolutely goes nowhere, the dialogues appear more like rambling, even if we sense there is a point to it. Ann is replicating patterns of abandonment she herself suffered from her father, who felt the same need for detachment she now feels. But the screenplay is terribly inelegant when trying to drive that point. The movie's ending is much like its beginning; messy and pointless