After Him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxkC0M5RVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xTBiGyHxnk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx29deBYL2E

It’s an intense tale of a mother’s grief after the accidental death of her 20-year- old soDuration: 81 minsGenre: DramaDirector: Gaël MorelLead actor: Catherine Deneuve.
DENEUVE plays Camille, the mother. After her son’s death Camille focuses on her son’s best friend Franck, (THOMAS DUMERCHEZ), who was actually driving the car when the accident occurred. There’s an intensity in her that veers towards obsession.AFTER HIM never quite delivers in terms of drama although there’s a tremendous reality to the sadness. Co-writer/director Gael Morel seems to be satisfied with creating an unsettled mood to the film, garnering terrific performances from his cast in the process.But the film doesn’t go very much beyond the rather superficial premise that Camille is determined that Franck fulfil the promise that has been denied to her son.It’s all very European in style, particularly the ending, but there’s a sense of something missing here and it isn’t grief.
review
Catherine Deneuve is not just an actress but a country. For those of a certain (or even uncertain) age, she embodies an idea of France - incredible elegance, a touch of haughtiness, a sophistication that could only come from Paris, clad in YSL and her own fragrance. Untouchable, unworldly, flawless.
In the 1960s, she was the belle du jour, the face that every director and leading actor wanted to have - in every sense. She played whores and killers, vampires and gold-diggers, actresses and princesses and, later, even an American factory worker (in Lars von Trier's oddball Dancer In The Dark). In the 1980s, she became the official visage for Marianne, the symbol of France. La Reine Catherine, the French ideal.
That can be hard to live up to. Maintaining a legendary face takes work and it's a battle you can't win. Age shall weary them and the years condemn. Deneuve is now 64 and her face has begun to disobey her commands. I don't know if she has had facelifts, nor care, but I think there's less expression in her face than there once was. And no, I don't think that's always true of older actors - some become more expressive as they age, because they are better actors.
Then again, in this case, it may be the performance. Deneuve has always been good at coldly minimal roles. She has said that directors often have to get her to ramp her performance up, rather than down, because she tends to underplay. In this movie, it's the other way around: she starts huge and then keeps reducing the emotions, until she's almost completely inscrutable. It's an intriguing performance because it's like an attempt to erase the character. Maybe that's part of the attraction for Deneuve. Who would blame her, after almost 50 years in the footlights, for playing a woman who wants to become invisible?
The film is about grief, a tricky subject. Everyone knows a little about it and most of us have seen it done badly on film. At one end you get floods of tears; at the other, cold fury, with barren bleakness in between. Few films manage the gravity of it without becoming histrionic; once they succumb to that, it's all over. Life's too short to watch other people's unconvincing grief. If you're going to go after it, you'd better nail it. Anything less is pretentious.
For the first couple of reels of Apres Lui, the story of a woman whose son has been killed in a car accident, I was unconvinced. The director Gael Morel ( Le Clan) just seems to do the obvious but without clarity. The opening shows two young men horsing around as they dress in women's clothes. Deneuve breezes in wearing jeans and helps them with their make-up

They could be gay, except they talk about girls. It turns out they are going to a buck's party. Next thing, the phone rings and Camille (Deneuve) is told her son is dead. Apparently the French police do this sort of thing over the phone. She begins to wail, then calls her daughter Laure (Elodie Bouchez), to tell her. The crying continues through the identification of the body at the hospital with her ex-husband Francois (Guy Marchand), and the bleak funeral. En route to the wake Camille stops by the tree where her son Mathieu (Adrien Jolivet) died. She finds his friend Franck (Thomas Dumerchez) sitting there with a bunch of flowers, crying. She takes him to the wake. Both Laure and her father attack him for coming but Camille will not let them throw him out. So begins the relationship that will become the most important in Camille's life.
Morel, who was an actor in Andre Techine's wonderful 1994 film Wild Reeds, makes few concessions to clarity or brevity in these scenes. The light is so dim in the opening scene that I didn't recognise Franck as the same boy - the one who dressed up with Mathieu. That made it momentarily difficult to work out why people were so hostile to him at the wake. Morel withholds the news that Franck drove the car. Everyone on screen knows it but the audience is kept in the dark - literally. This is an unusual technique but characteristic of a certain kind of French film, in which keeping the audience informed is akin to pandering.
The combination of the twilight gloom and the depiction of grief as simple weeping just about did me in but then the film changes. Camille stops crying and begins to pursue her friendship with Franck. She goes to the university, where both young men were studying, to find out about his grades. She pursues his parents, who are migrants from Portugal, to ensure he returns to class. She gives him a job in her bookshop to provide a stipend. The cameraman is allowed to use lights, too.
The effect is to save the film and set it off in the direction Morel was always intending, towards mystery. This gives Deneuve something to do, as Camille tries to reconnect with her son's energy through Franck. The longer the film goes, the more nuanced the performance becomes. Deneuve convinces us that Camille's grief is getting worse, not better, and her awareness of what she's doing is receding, rather than improving. The more unhinged she becomes, the quieter and more moving Deneuve's performance.
As I say, it's hard to know how much of her stony visage is acting and how much is the result of what we might call maintenance. I think it's mostly the former but either way, it works pretty well for this role.