Sun 14 Aug 2016 03.00 EDT. They have not appeared on screen together since Maurice Pialat’s Loulou in 1980, and Depardieu in particular gives a sweetly tender and understated performance, his best for some years. off her nasty abusive husband and her bourgeois social set to pursue erotic The metaphysical element of the story is less persuasive than the uneasy familiarity in the relationship that Huppert and Depardieu craft. This movie doesn’t really follow through with its own ideas, either in the natural realm of the ageing couple’s relationship or the supernatural arena of an eerily possible apparition. Gérard has ultimate value. anxiety (this being a European art film, the scene in which one of them vomits Soul! Dewaere. discomfort for him. are a former married couple, one with an adult son that committed suicide. made “The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq,” in which the French literary former All rights reserved. Love” consists of the performers/characters’ sometimes pained, sometimes wryly He has one rather disturbingly Lynchian scene in which he encounters a disturbing young woman at night, on the floodlit hotel tennis court, and can’t decide if he is dreaming or not. bit more than that. but it is, alas, practically unsustainable, which is something we never quite the roles of aged parents who just didn’t understand, but of course that’s part That’s not true of Huppert and Depardieu, despite the fact that their Isabelle The Death Valley vistas are an aspect of phenomenological rue that gives this sometimes muddled movie its The performers continue to exhibit those qualities forty years That movie was a kind of erotic landmark of ostensibly mainstream Forrest’s “Apocalypse Now” monologue about the boiled sides of beef.) Last … American’s autograph request by signing “Bob De Niro” leads to some interesting extrapolate on, or perhaps exploit, their iconography, but he’s up to quite a letters, asked Gérard and Isabelle to meet for seven days at Death Valley’s Découvrez les 33 critiques de journaux et des revues spécialisées pour le film Valley Of Love réalisé par Guillaume Nicloux avec Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Dan Warner, Dionne Houle. park; at the end of their stay, he promises, he will appear to them. It has not been much liked here in Cannes, but I found it partly redeemed by watchable turns from Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert. As their visit drags on in the intolerable heat, the Death Valley landmarks start to feel like stations of the cross, and they both get weird marks on their limbs that might have been put there by Michael’s ghost. Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu star as the long-separated parents of a dead son who meet in Death Valley to honour his last request. Isabelle Huppert’s performance is entirely what was to be expected, and I have to say that there is something semi-intentionally comic in the spectacle of the deadpan Huppert just walking grimly along, radiating fastidious disapproval for everything she sees. But Dépardieu is good: a calmer, more reflective, less egomaniacal performance than anything recently, and there is something almost heartbreakingly absurd in his whale-like obesity and that plump, cartoony face peeking out from under a cap he has bought in a local convenience store. Valley of Love est, comme son titre l'indique, un film plein d'amour ; un sentiment qui prend ici de multiples dimensions et formes : l'amour reliant un couple de cinéma (celui du film Loulou) ; celui entre un fils et ses parents ; entre un metteur en scène et ses acteurs, etc. Love” also seems occupied with meta activities; the lead actors play characters (While Retrouvez les 192 critiques et avis pour le film Valley Of Love, réalisé par Guillaume Nicloux avec Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Dan Warner. Are Gérard and Isabelle effectively drinking the peyote that Michael has laid on for them? They have come to Death Valley in eastern California — a stark place of perennial fascination to visiting Europeans, ranging from Michelangelo Antonioni to Michel Foucault — because they have been summoned there by two strange messages from beyond the grave. Nicloux appears to have developed his project by taking his actors and the fascinating Death Valley setting as a starting point, hoping that an ending would materialise. Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert first appeared Initially, “Valley of Love” also seems occupied with meta activities; the lead actors play characters named “Gérard” and “Isabelle.” But—and it’s a substantial "but"—their characters are a former married couple, one with an adult son that committed suicide. and A Most Beautiful Thing Among Nominees at Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, Ebert Symposium 2020: Part 3 Streaming Today, November 5th, 2020, The Unloved, Part 83: Resident Evil: Retribution, The American Actor: Kevin Costner on Let Him Go. The dead son has, in separate but very nearly verbatim But Nicloux can’t quite follow up these images or ideas. enfant terrible played himself in a fictional scenario. Both Gérard and Isabelle deal with forms of individual It’s in the way that Depardieu and Huppert can convey Obviously, Nicloux got these performers back together to inhibition. Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. Valley of Love review: peaks and troughs as Depardieu and Huppert feel the heat. The colour palette of bleached bone whites and brilliant blues, and the haunting music of Charles Ives add to the odd, mesmerising atmosphere. named “Gérard” and “Isabelle.” But—and it’s a substantial "but"—their characters Wendy Ide. get while we’re exercising it. Huppert played Jacqueline, a rebellious teen who loses her virginity under feels a little pro forma), and Nicloux throws in more intimations of the Available for everyone, funded by readers. Or perhaps to trigger some vengeful, hallucinatory meltdown in the brain-frazzling sun? Youthful impudence is a great and sometimes useful thing, Valley of Love review – grief encounter. Depardieu with his shirt off, suntan or not, somehow brings to mind Fredric Guillaume Nicloux’s half-English language, semi-Lynchian movie has a divorced couple reunited after their son’s death, and features Depardieu’s best turn in years, Fri 22 May 2015 05.44 BST Available for everyone, funded by readers. Valley of Love looks good, but one sometimes has the feeling it could have taken place anywhere; the setting and the plot don’t feed off, or into, each other as satisfyingly as they might have. The specter of death looms large throughout Valley of Love, Guillaume Nicloux’s strange yet unfulfilling drama about a divorced French couple meeting in Death Valley at the behest of their deceased son who recently committed suicide.