Whats with middle-aged French actresses? Carole Bouquet, in Andre Téchinés Unforgivable, joins the likes of Nathalie Baye, Sabine Azema, and Catherine Deneuve, ageless wonders who look more elegant and enticing by the year. Bouquet could still plausibly play one of her most famous roles as a gorgeous wife whose husband dumps her for a frumpy secretary in Bertrand Bliers 1989 comedy Too Beautiful for You.
In Unforgivableanother Téchiné film played out among several characters whose interlocking stories dramatize lifes unavoidable messinessBouquet has the meatiest part. Shes Judith, a bisexual model-turned-antique dealer-turned-real estate broker whose unapologetic past becomes the obsessive focus of her current husband, the older crime novelist Francis (Andre Dussollier), whom she marries shortly after showing him a house on an idyllic island near Venice, where they currently live.
The couples seemingly perfect relationship, however, is too good to be true for Francis, even after only a year and a half of being married. Stymied, he cant even begin to write his new novel. Soon after Franciss flighty adult daughter, Alice (Melanie Thierry), visits the couple, she mysteriously disappears, leaving her 10-year-old daughter with him and Judith. He hires Judiths close friend (and former lover) Anna Maria (Adriana Asti)a retired private detectiveto track Alice down. And later, he pays Anna Marias fresh-out-of-jail son, Jérémie (Mauro Conte), to tail Judith to find out if she is having an affair. As a result, Francis finds out more than he wants to know about his married daughterwho has run away with a drug dealing loverand about his wife. The fallout from these revelationswhich also includes a suicide attemptcauses Francis to reexamine how hes behaved in his marriage.
Téchinés films explore societys moral compass through a cross-section of characters, and sometimes his characterizations collapse under the weight of his themes, like in the unsatisfactory AIDS melodrama The Witnesses. But in Unforgivableas in his best films My Favorite Season and StrayedTéchinés technique subtly serves the relationships, that are as complex and involving as any in modern cinema.
Theres a lot going on in Unforgivable, sometimes too much. Téchiné strains for significance by nicknaming Judith Cherubina, an allusion to the delightfully rakish Cherubino in Mozarts opera The Marriage of Figaro, or when Judiths nose bleeds occur right before she begins a romantic relationship. Contrivance too often shapes these peoples lives: Judith even has had some sort of relationship with the rogue whos run with her daughter-in-law. But Téchinés masterly directionsubtly elliptical editing that compresses long periods of time, camerawork that evocatively fades to white during moments of emotional intensity, and the effectively sparing use of Max Richters chamber musicmakes the scripts symbolism and coincidence feel organic and natural. These peoples lives become convincingly messy, not merely contrived movements by an auteurs puppets.
In addition to Bouquets perfectly pitched performance (in which she speaks French, Italian, and English), the wonderful Andre Dussollier makes Francis a believable bundle of contradictions, and together they transform a potentially cutesy ending into something powerfully consistent with the rest of Téchinés film, in which shattered relationships can be rebuilt, piece by broken piece.