Jean-Marc Vallee's ‘Café De Flore’ is one of
my favourite speculative films of recent years.
Written and directed by Vallee, who also directed the
critically acclaimed Dallas Buyer’s Club, the film is a masterpiece of
sustained tension and intrigue, with fragmentary elements that fit together
like a Chinese puzzle to create a beautiful, moving cinematic experience.
The speculative
elements in the film are subtle and don’t really come into force until the end;
although there are very brief and occasional ‘horror’ moments, included perhaps
as red herrings as the film never veers down that particular path. In fact, you could even argue that the film
is not speculative at all. On first
watch, it is a baffling film for most of its length; having two story threads
set forty years apart which appear to have no obvious connection to each
other.
In one
thread, Kevin Parent is Antoine, a successful modern-day DJ who has recently
separated from his wife, Carole (played by Helene Florent), and now living with new flame, Rose (Evelyn Brochu) who he believes is his soul
mate. The people close to Antoine,
including his two daughters and his parents, are struggling to adjust to the
breakup of this twenty-year relationship that began when Antoine and Carole
were teenagers. Least able to cope is ex-wife
Carole, who is sleepwalking and suffering nightmares of a ‘little monster’
glimpsed in the back seat of her car.
The second
thread concerns Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradise), a young mother in 1960’s Paris whose husband leaves
her after the birth of their Down’s Syndrome son, Laurent (Marin Gerrier). Jacqueline is besotted with Laurent and committed
to finding ways to extend his life beyond the expected twenty-five years. Her story turns darker after Laurent bonds
with a girl at his school who also has Down’s and who he quickly becomes inseparable
from.
Café De
Flore is a film that shouldn’t work. The
timeline is all over the place. Besides
the two threads, we also have flashbacks to Antoine and Carole falling in love as
teenagers. These three elements
constantly shift, merge, overlap, and mirror each other, as if all three are
happening at once. Also, the film’s
slightly corny theme of soul mates, destiny, and love ‘written in the stars’
could easily have derailed it. Yet this
never happens. On first watch, I
genuinely had no idea where it was going and the denouncement, when it came,
left me stunned. The film only begins to
reveal itself towards the end when Carole visits a medium in order to make sense
of her nightmares. Watching it a second
time, I could see how all the pointers were laid bare – almost to a glaring
degree – and I wondered how the film could ever have kept me guessing. Of course, I now had the benefit of
hindsight, and it’s worth mentioning that because of the film’s twist ending it
didn’t really stand up to a second viewing, unless you want to unpick the tiny
embedded details and clues. The only
mis-step for me was the unnecessary Amelie-esque voiceover at the beginning,
which a number of French films have used in recent times perhaps in an attempt
to align themselves with that particular film’s huge international success.
The acting
is excellent throughout, and Paradise in
particular shines as the dowdy, exhausted single-mother spiralling into
jealousy and defeat. The film also has a
great, pivotal soundtrack, including songs from The Cure, Sigur Ros (who provide
the film with one of its lighter, funnier moments) and Pink Floyd.
Café de
Flore’s final shot, in which the camera zooms into a photograph, is as powerful
as the similar device used by Kubrick at the end of The Shining (in fact it may
even be a homage, or if you prefer a
theft, from that film). Though the
intent is not to scare, it is a shocking moment in which all the film’s
connections and symbols and clues suddenly come to the fore. Of course, as with any twist-ending film,
there will inevitably be those people who jump up and say they knew what was
going on from the beginning. To those
people I doff my cap, whilst at the same time feeling a bit sorry that they
couldn’t enjoy this ride to the end. Café
de Flore, then. Leave your cynicism at
the door.
