The Cannes favourite may have worn out his charm with this insufferable story of the author’s multiple affairs
The fey movies of Arnaud Desplechin are indulgences that I can sometimes indulge. I had a sweet tooth for his glutinous A Christmas Tale from 2008 and loved his mysterious fantasy Kings and Queen (2004) and intriguing Edward Bond adaptation Playing “In the Company of Men” from the year before that. Desplechin has been a Cannes favourite for so long that it’s almost impossible to imagine the festival without one of his dreamy-jaunty jeux d’ésprit on the menu.
But this latest film, showing in the new Cannes Premiere section, is just unbearable – like being condescendingly simpered at for an hour and a half: a film full of people smiling knowingly and laughing delightedly at each other’s not-especially-funny-or-interesting remarks, and it’s all the more insufferable for things the film gets fundamentally and structurally wrong.
