Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Wed 19 Jun
Claude Miller / 2012 / France / 110 min
In this tricky little French number, the late Claude Miller adapts François Mauriac’s melodramatic novel, set in the lush surroundings of Southern France during the 1920s. It’s an exceptionally tasteful film, in fact a little too much so. In the end, all of the elegant trimmings Miller employs can’t masquerade the fact that Thérèse Desqueyroux is simply a boring movie populated with bland aristocrats and insane bourgeois housewives that very few of us can identify with.
Thérèse, (Audrey Tautou) the daughter of a wealthy landowner, is married off to her next-door neighbour Bernard (Gilles Lellouche) to join the two family’s immense estates. It’s not long though before Thérèse is jaded with provincial domestic life and conspires to be free of her husband.
Tautou, a fine actress, does her best with the role but it’s hard to feel any empathy for a character that frankly has a fabulous life and then destroys it because she gets a bit bored. The cinematography is stunning, capturing the pine forests and country estates in watery golden shades and the costumes are subtly beautiful but it’s not enough to save the film. The never-ending running time places the final nail in the coffin. Despite the picture’s alluring visuals, this satisfaction is outweighed by it’s lack of substance.