The other side of this coin is represented by Philippe Garrel’s “Jealousy.” Garrel, who has been making films for decades, is a favorite of highbrow critics in his native France, and his latest is touted as his most accessible film ever. So is he poised for, at long last, his big stateside breakthrough, as his coterie of U.S. admirers hopes? It’s hard to imagine he is, since “Jealousy” is the kind of slight, academic, self-satisfied exercise that preaches only to the converted.
Like every serious director to emerge from France since the early ’70s, Garrel has had to deal with the legacy of the French New Wave, of which he was just a bit too young to have been a part. Yet unlike French directors who’ve justifiably achieved international renown since–from the likes of Bertrand Blier and Maurice Pialat back when, to Olivier Assayas and Arnaud Desplechin more recently–he has remained an insular favorite, and “Jealousy” suggests that’s because he’s been content to operate within the boundaries left by the New Wave rather than push beyond them.
There is, of course, a large element of self-contradiction in this. The New Wave became a global sensation and changed film history by overthrowing an increasingly ossified set of cinematic conventions and establishing its own, more vital ones. To operate in the movement’s real spirit, then, would be to “make it new” yet again, rather than to imitate what was new 50 years ago, as Garrel does.
His bonds to the past are indicated by the fact that over his career Garrel has worked with three cinematographers who became legendary for their work with the New Wave: Raoul Coutard, William Lubtchansky and Willy Kurant. Kurant, who is 80, shot “Jealousy” in an elegant black and white (itself an indicative choice on Garrel’s part) that recalls Godard’s “Masculine/Feminine” and other films he shot a half-century ago.
Indeed, watching “Jealousy” you get visual echoes not only of Godard’s work but also of canonical films by Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer, Eustache and other directors. What you don’t get is any sense of an aesthetic post-dating 1972.
Garrel’s strict allegiance to the stylistic tropes of decades past is matched by a similar penchant on the thematic level. Like a zillion other French films, “Jealousy” concerns the travails of l’amour and centers on a romantic trio of very attractive young people. The story begins when Louis (Louis Garrel) leaves his partner Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant) and their young daughter Charlotte (Olga Milshtein, whose performance is the film’s one breath of fresh air) to move in with his new love, Claudia (Anna Mouglalis). Both Louis and Claudia are actors, and impecunious, but he’s got work and she doesn’t. After spending some time with Claudia, it’s far easier to glean why no one will hire her than to understand why Louis doesn’t see that she’s a man-eater who’ll break his heart.
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