Christophe Honore’s rather baffling epic-length drama covers the time span between the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and the 9/11 attacks and against this background world-changing events the story is simply about two women who tried desperately to be loved. Young Madeleine discovers the way to pay for the expensive fancy shoes she coverts at the store she works in Paris, is to become a part-time happy hooker. One day one of her clients marries her and whisks away to Prague his hometown where their daughter Vera is born.
The day the Russian tanks roll into town hubby Jaromi is ‘playing away from home’ , so Madeleine has two good reasons to take Vera back to Paris and find herself husband number two.
Over the years Jaromi keeps popping up in Paris, and at one time he almost woos Madeleine back, but she seems happy enough to settle for a quickie on the side with him instead. When Vera is grown up she loses the plot a little like her mother …. but to be fair to her, the plot of the movie by now has also gone way off the rails. One night Vera is drunk in a bar in London and picks up the drummer from the band that is playing there. He is however gay, but that doesn’t seem to stop Vera ….from whining at least ….. but by this point the movie has moved from being intriguing to just plain annoying.
And if that is not enough to really irritate, Honore stops the action 6 or 7 times and has the characters sing and half-recite really banal songs. I know its a French ‘thing’ and maybe they sound less trivial when not translated, but they are so infuriating.
There are some good things going for the movie ….Madeleine as a young woman is played by Ludivine Sagnier, and as an older woman by Catherine Deneuve, and the older Vera is her real life daughter Chiara Mastroianni. Plus old Jaromil is played by distinguished director Milos Forman, and also in the movie are Louis Garrel and Paul Schneider.
Cut the running time by 45 minutes, take out all the songs, give some semblance of direction to the plot, and you will have decent movie of sorts.
