Him, by Guillaume Canet, written by Guillaume Canet, with Guillaume Canet, recounts the procrastination of a man in the midst of an existential crisis, a musician lacking inspiration. While waiting for its super production, Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, the director of Small handkerchiefs sign “a more personal film “, in theaters October 27.
A man arrives on a lost Breton island to take stock. Composer of film music, he goes through a lack of inspiration and his life as a couple is in turmoil. When he arrives in the house he has rented, isolated and overlooking the ocean, he is disappointed to find an old out-of-tune piano and strange noises coming from the attic. He may take a breath of fresh air on his bicycle on the small steep roads that skirt the cliff, he quickly finds himself confronted with himself in the solitude of this strange and disturbing place, in which will invite each other in turn. his wife, his mistress, his parents, his son, or even his old boyfriend… But who is hiding in the attic?
Guillaume Canet stages a gallery of characters in a dreamlike and theatrical device where the main character himself writes the dialogues. So he makes his wife, his mistress, his father, his mother, his son, and all those who feed his demons say what he wants. The “guests” of this interior dialogue are not without free will, however, commenting all the time on the content of the texts imposed on them by the big boss of this interior staging.
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It must be said that the composer, a sickly jealous man who cheats on his wife to reassure herself, does not always give the good role to the characters in his life. He will have to understand who is hiding in the attic and that he kills this intruder so that the knots are finally untied and that peace, happiness and harmony can settle in him.
Adultery, paternity, filiation, the pangs of creation, the wear and tear of the couple, sexual fantasies, jealousy are thus on the program of this latest film by Guillaume Canet, which he wrote, directed, and whose he embodies the main character, the others being played by Virginie Efira, Mathieu Kassovitz, Laetitia Casta, Nathalie Baye, Patrick Chesnais, Gilles Cohen…
It is in full confinement, stopped in its tracks on the realization ofAsterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, that Guillaume Canet wrote the screenplay for Him, a movie “important to him”, he says on his Instagram account.
The casting is dreamlike, the sets and the lighting are very neat, the Breton landscapes beautifully filmed. All of this fails to get the film off the ground, however. The reference to the world of Bertrand Blier has not escaped us, but Guillaume Canet seems to have been contaminated by the failure of his character’s inspiration.
Between a suffocating closed door where clichés are scattered that the second degree does not manage to defuse, and the caricatural vision of Brittany (beautiful landscapes populated by surly women and toothless alcoholics …), surprising for the observant and committed filmmaker , we get bogged down in psychodrama.
Gender: Thriller, drama
Director: Guillaume Canet
Actors: Guillaume Canet, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Kassovitz, Laetitia Casta, Nathalie Baye, Patrick Chesnais, Gilles Cohen …
Country : France
Duration :
Exit : October 27, 2021
Distributer : Pathé
Synopsis: A composer in search of inspiration, who has just left wife and children, thinks of finding refuge in an old house on the side of a cliff, on a deserted Breton island. In this strange and isolated place, he will only find an out of tune piano and visitors determined not to leave him alone.