Rien sur Robert
The reason why I disliked this movie is certainly not because I couldn’t understand it, despite horrible lack of subtitles. In fact, it seems so obscure and apparently ununderstandable for non-French people that nobody cares to subtitle it, not even in French. Lucky me that the film is not, say, Italian?
However, you don’t have film-crazed intellectuals in Italy. “On rit beaucoup” (“people laugh a lot”), that is what one of the reviews says. But really, this film is written for critics and I can see how only critics would watch it. Certainly, there is quite a bit of irony in the film, and the main character’s faux-pas, to write bullshit about a movie he’s never even seen, is subtly funny and that particular detail tells us everything about the environment the characters are living in.
Unfortunately, they are all hate- and spiteful. Although I admit that the movie does a great job at introducing us to them and characterizes them in quite an interesting way, I couldn’t help but facepalm at their falseness. It’s hard to like a movie where the characters’ badness doesn’t even make me laugh.
Sure, there might be aspects about the film that are lovely. I mentioned the subtlety of its humor, and sometimes, it’s not so bad; the last line, for example, has an amusing sweetness to it. It made me feel a little better about the whole thing.
Not too surprisingly, the film was recommended to me something like 4 years ago, by Loris’ father, who – haha – is a movie critic. (Maybe not 4 years, but in 2008 I certainly knew about the film) At the time, I started watching it until the scene in which Juliette randomly talks to this guy in the park, which is where I couldn’t stand the film anymore. I always felt like I wanted to see the rest of it, but now I think I should have left it at that. All I got is peace of mind for not having missed out much.