From Cannes: Point/Counterpoint: "Marguerite & Julien"

POINT: Alan R. Xie, 3 Stars

Based on a true story, “Marguerite & Julien” depicts the romance between a brother (Jérémie Elkaïm) and sister (Anaïs Demoustier). The children of the Lord of Tourlaville, Marguerite and Julien de Ravalet have a close and loving relationship while growing up that eventually blossoms into something more in adulthood. The forbidden nature of their incest is the crux of conflict in the film, as their family seeks to conceal it by marrying Marguerite to another man (Géraldine Chaplin).

The film is unnecessarily melodramatic and overdone, with much of its almost two-hour runtime filled with suggestive scenes between the two siblings prior to the consummation of their relationship. Although Demoustier exudes in her performance an unyielding and passionate devotion to the illicit romance, Elkaïm’s acting is more stiff and unconvincing. The two leads certainly do not make the film worthy of its excessive drama—in fact, another similar film in competition this year at Cannes, Maïwenn’s “Mon roi,” is a far superior French romance.

Admittedly, the film’s cinematography and aesthetics are impressive. Donzelli employs a unique technique where she establishes a seemingly still shot with all of the characters motionless that suddenly bursts into motion as the camera slowly rotates into place. She approaches costumes and other visuals with a flair that sometimes is reminiscent of Wes Anderson, but the deliberate inclusion of anachronistic objects such as helicopters and automobiles is ultimately too disorienting. Perhaps this story functions better as a fairy tale—within the film’s frame narrative, it’s actually presented as such to a group of young girls—but at face value, it is a far from compelling love story.

COUNTERPOINT: Tianxing V. Lan, 5 Stars

“Marguerite & Julien” does only one thing: It tells a simple but beautiful love story. Director Valérie Donzelli does not bother to discuss incest as an ethical problem, and the title characters seem to be fine with the fact that they are siblings. However, the film accomplishes its goal to an extreme, both in regard to the burning passion on screen and the strikingly stylized visuals. The result is a riveting tale full of destructive love and moving sense of destiny.

Most noticeable in the film is the director’s stylistic take on this 400-year old story. Some important scenes start with a still shot where the camera floats around the characters, some are accompanied by pop songs with English lyrics, and oftentimes people use cameras, flashlights, or even helicopters with no explanation. These anachronisms give the film a wonderful reminiscence of deconstructionist visual arts, implicative of the modern viewpoint in the narrative as if the characters know they are only recreating the history, but not living in it. Thus even when the film cuts back to perfectly normal 17h century scenes, the audience is still alerted that what the actors wear are costumes, and the castles are sets.

This is very similar to Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” another attempt to tell a classic story in a modern narrative. The unique style not only makes the film more visually fascinating, but also reminds the audiences that what they see is a story staged by a director and a cast, and as such the plausibility of the plot is not the priority, because its function is to create the emotions between the characters. Donzelli does not spend much time on exposition, but focuses heavily on the love between the two, and the rage of the society, which serves to accentuate their love by contrast. For instance, the director does not explain why the police force of a whole country seems to be involved in the search for the siblings, and the helicopters they use evidently do not belong to their age. But when the audience already accepts that “making sense” is not a concern of the movie, it might appreciate the sharp contrast between the power of the society and the helplessness of Marguerite and Julien as a visual representation of the “us against the world” sentiment.

The visual style is just one of the many ways the director lets the passion of the couple burn out. The actors’ theatrical lines magnify the expression of emotions, and the grand baroque music put side by side with modern love songs (another thing that does not “make sense” but does suit the emotions) beautifully speak out their love, their desire, their fears and their resolution. At last, the sense of foreboding throughout the film resonates with the destructive nature of romantic love. From the beginning, the audience knows the characters would be parted and punished, but then the process leading towards it is still heartbreaking. At the final scene when the inevitable fate finally befalls onto the banished couple, they feel like the ancestors of La nouvelle Héloïse, Werther, Hermann and Dorothea.

Admittedly, “Marguerite & Julien” is extravagant and very dramatic, but these are not necessarily bad things. In this film, these are exactly what is beautiful about this modernist, theatrical and captivating film.