EU Week Two Update: THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN
Mia Hansen-Love’s THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN (France)
Wednesday, March 17, 8pm (final screening)
A great film, worthy of comparison to the masterpieces of Maurice Pialat, André Téchiné, or Edward Yang. Like those directors at their peak, Mia Hansen-Love has realized her characters so thoroughly that the very formal properties of the work—narrative structure, pacing, even edits between close-ups and medium shots—reflect the tenor of their experience. It’s a movie whose every detail exalts the potentiality of being alive, not only in moments of spontaneity but also in familiar actions that achieve unexpected resonance. Ironically, THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN was inspired by the 2005 suicide of Humbert Balsan, the legendary producer of European and Middle Eastern art cinema. The film is organized around the death of its Balsan stand-in, Gregoire Canvel; it occurs, without pathos or hysterics, about halfway through the narrative. But as in Pialat’s life-affirming VAN GOGH, Hansen-Love does her best not to foreshadow Canvel’s suicide. In fact, the first half of CHILDREN depicts his life as perfectly fulfilled, both professionally and at home. It’s rare that a work of art can find profound things to say about happiness, but that’s just one of Hansen-Love’s accomplishments here: An early scene in which Canvel takes his wife and daughters to a Medieval cathedral shows a man at peace with his place in human history. There’s no attempt to stress the parallels between Canvel, who uses his wealth to support great films, and the merchants who financed religious art in the past. The focus is on his daughters’ discovery of the building’s grandeur, the fresh appreciation that makes great art timeless. (On the subject of great art, special mention should be made of Pascal Auffray’s cinematography, which uses natural light as gloriously and as modestly as Nestor Almendros’ work for Eric Rohmer.) The film is so attentive to Canvel’s impact on others that it doesn’t even register as a major shift when he disappears from the story: A subplot late in the film concerning his oldest daughter’s coming-of-age feels like an outgrowth of his support of the arts. Hansen-Love’s faith in art—as lifeblood, as historic record, as the center of community—is so axiomatic that one can fully enjoy CHILDREN without picking up on the inside references to Balsan’s career. (It’s in keeping with the film’s universal wisdom that the fictional movie posters around Canvel’s office aren’t cinephilic in-jokes but thematic watchwords, with titles like “The Journey is the Destination” and “Je sais que tu m’entends” ["I know that you hear me"].) And yet it’s the very accessibility of the film, relatable even in singular circumstances, that makes it such a successful tribute to its subject. (2009, 110 min, 35mm) — Ben Sachs