Saturday 4 February 2012

A Midsummer Night's Appartment

I recently watched the film L'Appartement.  I have to say that it is very bizarre, but also funny, enigmatic, and entertaining.
There really are too many plots for me to fully understand, let alone write down in a short blog post, but in brief it follows the fortunes of Max (Vincent Cassell) after he catches a brief glimpse of a former love, Lisa (Monica Belluci), who left him without saying why.  You find out the relationship in flashbacks, alongside him trying to track her down, but then further flashbacks provide more of the truth about them as well as the people around them.  In the end they all begin to wonder who it is they actually love, and the viewer does too.
As the film progresses, you find two of the main characters as actresses in a production of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', which provides a clue as to some obvious inspiration.  In the play, through the use of magic, the pair of lovers swap allegencies as to whom they love, however it is through other means within the film that this takes place.
The intriguing thing about the film is that the ending provides no real commentary or consequence on the actions of the characters involved and how they have behaved; there is something typically French about this and usually alien to US film-making where the 'good guy' always triumphs over the 'bad guy' and there are morals to be learned.
Additionally it seems that the film Wicker Park is a US remake of this film, however the two reasons of it being a US remake and the poor cast mean that it is unlikely that I will watch it.
For L'Appartement 8 out of 10.

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