French director André Téchiné’s 2011 film “Unforgivable,” which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight selection of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, strives to show life’s jagged edges but is ultimately weighed down by the filmmakers’ inability to fully flesh out characters and story. It is a film that gets better as it goes along, yet its superficialities still hinder it from reaching its full potential.
Essentially, the film’s plotline boils down to a writer, Francis (André Dussollier), who decides to move to Venice in order to work on his novel. In the process, he marries a local real estate agent. The marriage works well until Francis’ paranoia and maddening obsession with his new bride’s whereabouts compel him to ask an ex-con and another emotionally distraught human being, Jeremie (Mauro Conte), to trail his wife.
Essentially, Francis is so lost in his own head that he cannot understand half of the world around him. He moves to Venice to write a new novel, but his writer’s block soon prevents him from getting much of anything done.
Téchiné delves into the plights of his characters so quickly from the film’s opening scenes that it is almost disorientating. We see flashes of character motivations and personalities, as if the film is teasing us of bigger things to come. But these bits and pieces of information do little except to quickly glance over the problems surrounding the characters.
Soon enough, characters reveal dark secrets to one another, teeter on the edge of nervous breakdowns and attempt to hold back dangerous personal confessions. And Francis’ wife Judith (Carole Bouquet) frequently obtains nosebleeds whenever things appear not to be going her way, which appears to happen quite a bit.
The film’s main flaw is the number of subplots and other ideas that Téchiné and his fellow screenwriters have decided to include in an already predictable yet intricate story. These include Francis’ relationship with his spoiled daughter Alice (Mélanie Thierry), Alice’s relationships with her current and former lovers and Francis and Judith’s relationship with Jeremie’s mother Anna Maria (Adriana Asti), an aging private detective who was once Judith’s lover.
Luckily, the film is anchored by an engaging performance from André Dussollier who does an accomplished job of playing the conflicted protagonist at the film’s center.
Francis’ relationship with Judith could make for an interesting film within itself, and while it is commendable for what Téchiné is going for by introducing these other characters into the story, they eclipse the film’s main plot.
Of course, this is not to say the film is without its dramatic moments. Téchiné can clearly muster great performances out of all and any of his actors. However, the film’s characters are not terribly engaging to begin with, and it becomes increasingly difficult to actually care about their plights as a viewer, even as the relationships between these people slowly deteriorate.
Even after a dramatic confrontation between Francis and Jeremie near the film’s ending, Téchiné cannot keep his film from slipping into melodrama for the nth time.
Nonetheless, cinematographer Julien Hirsch and Téchiné do an admirable job at capturing the backdrops of the cityscape of Venice, and the film’s color palette is pleasing to the eye.
Likewise, Téchiné infuses scenes with dramatic musical pieces thanks to the excellent Max Richter, whose credits include the 2008 film “Waltz with Bashir” and musical talents are put to appropriate use throughout “Unforgivable.”
Ultimately, this half-baked film has too many plot strands and undercooked ideas to be effective and really say much of anything. While “Unforgivable” does an admirable job at showing us the messiness that ensues when people become involved in each other’s affairs, Téchiné has crammed so many ideas into his film that he does not leave the viewer with any sort of substantial takeaway or residual message.
