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Les Fantômes d'Ismaël
Ismael's Ghosts
France 2017
produced by Pascal Caucheteux, Oury Milshtein (executive) for Why Not Productions, France 2 Cinéma, Canal+
directed by Arnaud Desplechin
starring Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, Alba Rohrwacher, László Szabó, Hippolyte Girardot, Jacques Nolot, Catherine Mouchet, Samir Guesmi, Mélodie Richard, Marc Prin, Bruno Todeschini, Pascal Ternisien, Philippe Fretun, Bernard Bloch, Guillaume Briat, Marc Berman, Eric Franquelin, Philippe Soutan, Zohar Wexler, Yael Fogiel, Cyril Bothorel, El Kebir, Béatrice Michel, Yann Coridian, Ahmed Benaďssa, Isabelle Sadoyan, Rémy Roubakha, Gennadiy Fomin, Jana Epikaridis, Alnesa Horvatova, Nerouam Talbi, Leila Amara, Flora Djien, Petr Surmaj, Marion Bottollier, Jacques Lassalle
written by Arnaud Desplechin, Léa Mysius, Julie Peyr, music by Grégoire Hetzel, Mike Kourtzer
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Ismael (Mathieu Amalric) is a fairly successful movie director - who's
to this day plagued by the fact that his wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard)
has disappeared without a trace some 20 years ago - even if he has found
new love in Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Then though Carlotta turns up
again one day, a little bit as if nothing has happened at all, and somehow
she and Sylvia become friends even - before Carlotta moves on to make up
with her gravely sick father (László Szabó), who's also Ismael's mentor
... but that doesn't go very well. Sylvia leaves Ismael as well, even
though deep down she still loves him. This all throws Ismael a little bit
off center, and thus work on his new movie suffers - a movie that kind of
mirrors his own story, even if it's an espionage film about a man looking
for his brother (Louis Garrel), who's either a top spy or an absolute
idiot who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time all the time
... Ismael's Ghosts is a well-directed and brilliantly
acted movie - but its story seems to stand in its own way. Which is not to
say it's badly written, but it tries to tell so amazingly much in just
under two hours and at the same time lacks proper structure and
stringency. And it's not even that the story's uninteresting, it just
would work so much better as a novel, a narrative framework that's
relatively free of structural necessities, than a movie, where without
proper character motivations one feels a bit lost when trying to follow
the story. And of course, the film's mix of comedy, melodram, drama,
thriller and whatnot, as interesting as it is as such, also leaves one
rather confused. All this makes Ismael's Ghosts not a bad movie,
but one that promises more than it keeps.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
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a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
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Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
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