Small Cuts (2003)

Strong and Moving!

Simply Perfect

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

The first must-see film of the year.

Any movie with such a cast deserves to be seen, and if directed and written by Pascal Bonizter, more so.Auteil plays the same character we've seen him in a thousand times. He's like a caricature version of his sublime "L'Adversaire" (same rural unsettling geography). Here we know this film's genre is something close to ... a vaudeville, like Beatrice tells him near the end. Not a drama. Not a comedy. Not a crime novel, thou it pretends to be so. Never a love story, thou love or at least lust and routine relationships abound (our hero has 4 women in about 2 days, 2 of them married to dangerous people he knows...). Béatrice is a woman that's so mad that anybody sound would flee from her, but her mixture of sadness and personality is intriguing. Although personally I found her "depressive hysteric" character rather predictable. I mean, every scene in which she was with Auteil (all, for we only see her as that) we know she's going to say something high sounding (she, not him as she accuses), then allure him, rebuke him, say something depressing, make something mad, and then start again...Jean Yanne is probably the more solid character of the movie. Yes, he plays the same poker faced small time villain we've seen at Bertrand's Je règle mon pas sur le pas de mon père (1999). But unlike his role at the already mentioned "Tenue c. e.", here there's no comic counterbalance. Just a grim manipulator. But that's fine for this movie in which you can hardly feel anything for anybody.Emmanuelle Devos's Gaëlle is an awkward character, detached when she even offers her young "rival" rouge, a smoke, coiffure and even some love tips, and then XIX century hysterical for a guy she's just met. Her matter of fact talk at the travel agency was fine, proving, again, she's a fine actress. The whole affaire with Pascale Bussières Mathilde is outright ridiculous. Nice underwear for a serious working woman, thou :). Ludivine Sagnier's Nathalie is fine as a nincompoop teen with some principles. It's funny she did the beauty at the bad remake of "Swimming Pool"(2003). Which, again, proves she can act.Summing up, a pity such a stellar cast and director made a film only worth watching. Hope next time they decide to make a film, not play with us. Chabrol would have done it better. This is a movie about a pathological lier, and nobody seems to care (but maybe for Gaelle). The political running joke, in which everybody pokes fun about his political beliefs and "le Mur" is lost to me.

The obsession of 'signifie' and 'signifiant' is not enough to make a good film. Pascal Bonitzer should have remained in our memory as a brilliant film theorist back in the '60´s. It was not necessary to take the camera. The result is quite frustrating. It´s a pity for his excellent leading actors.

Daniel Auteuil's Bruno in Petites Couperes is a middle-aged model of his Pierre in Christian Vincent's La Separation of 10 years ago. In both films, youthful confidence in left-wing ideology and love (mutual metaphors) crumbles into paranoia - manifesting itself as trapped aggression in Pierre and desperately comic womanizing in the more recent Bruno.Unfortunately for Auteuil fans, the actor has become reliant on a uniform world-weariness (not unlike compatriot Johnny Hallyday in Leconte's recent l'Homme du Train). Acting it ain't, and becomes rather frustrating as the film progresses. Pascal Bonitzer doesn't help as the writer/director of the project. His sequencing of episodes overlaid with connecting symbolism fail to mask the film's lack of rhythm. I was particularly furious that the imposingly dramatic/romantic backdrops of Grenoble were made virtually redundant by a cameraman who was obviously shivering in the cold.Krisitn Scott Thomas almost rescues the show with her female counterpart to Bruno, Beatrice. She dramatizes the dizzying contradictions intended as Bruno in a character of increasing complexity to the point of becoming surreal. Bonitzer cannot sustain this though, and the flagging plot demands Beatrice to even out into another bourgeois mannequin. In doing so Bonitzer shows then denies Scott Thomas the Oscar cabinet.All the characters' submersion into the bourgeoisie may be a viable and indeed tragic outcome, but in this case it's a cop-out of a cadence (unlike the brutal, painful denouement of La Separation). A serious disappointment, 4/10.

I happened to see this film on a flight from Paris to Boston and it reminded me of the food on the plane: generic, tasteless and obscure. The French cinema seems to have lost its footing these days and this is a good example of how a motley script can waste brilliant actors. While some may find the 'playfulness' of the script to be in line with the dictates of Euro post modernism, the whole project seems more like a post-mortem on the death of Euro-cinema's golden years and truly fabulous talents --- one is vaguely reminded here of Bunuel but without the charm or wit.