Driving Madeleine is a low-key but affecting film with a simple scenario: an elderly lady, Madeleine Keller (Line Renaud) arranges to be driven around Paris by taxi. Her taxi driver, Charles (Dany Boon) is a grouch, preoccupied with his money troubles. Gradually, though, he becomes involved in Madeleine’s reminiscences as they visit the various locations of her tumultuous life. The journey is her last before entering a nursing home, and she shares her life story with the initially unresponsive Charles. The film follows her narrative and the gradual thawing between the two. Scene by scene, as their journey goes on, they see each other’s lives more clearly, and come to care. It is beautifully constructed and moving.
In what could be a dull procession through the streets, no matter how much variety there is in the photography, the film never lacks memorable images. Director Christian Carion and cinematographer Pierre Cottereau guide us masterfully between tracking shots, bird’s eye overviews, point-of-view shots, deft close-ups, and reaction shots as an extraordinary tale is woven. The film succeeds, amidst the chaotic and indifferent Paris traffic, in remaining tender and wonderfully humane.
It is the effective dramatisation, in beautifully-realised flashbacks, of Madeleine’s past which draws us most compellingly into her character. These episodes, over the 40s, 50s, and 60s, are designed and executed with a meticulous period feel in each case. Madeleine’s wartime romance with an American GI – brief but wonderful – leads to a child, Mathieu. She then meets and marries Ray (Jeremie Laheurte). This is the most painful aspect of the film when we see his violent rages and repeated abuse of a helpless Madeleine. She is trapped with a young son in a profoundly unequal time. It is only when Ray strikes not only Madeleine herself but also Mathieu, that she exacts revenge. In the world of the 1950s – far from her actions being seen as self-defense – she is, to Charles’ astonishment, sent to prison for a decade. Her life thereafter is less consequential, even when we see her as an older woman pictured campaigning for women victims of femicide. But the most important relationship is forged on that day of driving around Paris with Charles.
The film’s greatest power lies in the sudden, unexpected mutual understanding. She picks up, from overheard phone conversations, the anxieties and tensions of Charles’ life; and the ending is none the worse for being neatly cathartic. A lovely film; with understated but rich performances, a strong script by Carion and Cyril Gely, as well as the aforementioned beautiful cinematography and Philippe Rombi’s tender score, engaging the viewer with rare beauty. Original music is superbly juxtaposed with a series of apt mid-century standards, the likes of Etta James and Dinah Washington’s honeyed tones wafting us through the magnificent Haussmann boulevards of Paris. Tonal variety is marked, with several nice comedic touches, as when Charles rails at the Parisian traffic, even blocking a small street to let Madeleine go to the toilet in a restaurant. Highly recommended.
Screening at Eden Court, Inverness until Thu 14 Dec 2024