When a filmmaker is well-known for reiterating certain narratives or themes, perhaps even having a specific character reappear to embody such ideas, unfamiliar territory can be noteworthy. Such is the case with the typically self-reflexive Arnaud Desplechin and his unusual new film, Oh Mercy!, a rather uniquely French take on the police procedural–historically, something of a storytelling sandbox for the country’s prevailing auteurs, e.g. Henri-Georges Clouzot (Le Corbeau) or Maurice Pialat (Police). Well-defined characteristics leave plenty of appeal in straying from convention in order to craft salient stories that examine France’s law enforcement institutions within a tried-and-true framework. Unfortunately, Desplechin’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the procedural format is unbearably ponderous, an attempt at a formal deconstruction neither convincing nor consistently engaging.
In the French city of Roubaix, one of the country’s poorest communes and home to Desplechin himself, life is difficult and residents frequently struggle...
In the French city of Roubaix, one of the country’s poorest communes and home to Desplechin himself, life is difficult and residents frequently struggle...
- 9/27/2019
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
The Notebook is covering Cannes with an on-going correspondence between critic Leonardo Goi and editor Daniel Kasman.Oh MercyDear Danny, I only left Cannes yesterday, and yet the Croisette seemed unrealistically far this morning, almost as if it had already begun to drift into a cloud in time—as though it had never happened. This is my last dispatch of the year; like yours, it finds me writing you from the comforts of home. I began my day re-reading our correspondences—partly to give in to the nostalgia, but also to remind myself of all we’ve seen the past couple of weeks. And with the benefits of a good night’s sleep, things looked a lot clearer, and double bills I hadn’t yet thought of began to surface: films we had seen and written on in separate dispatches, which suddenly made for eye-opening pairings. What to make of...
- 5/28/2019
- MUBI
A ponderous true-crime procedural about a murder in France’s poorest commune, Arnaud Desplechin’s mostly lifeless but peripherally compelling “Oh Mercy!” finds the “My Golden Years” auteur returning to his birthplace to tell a story about a place that few people got to choose, and even fewer get to leave. If the film is a literal homecoming, however, it’s also a striking figurative departure for a filmmaker best known (and most beloved) for intricate, frazzled, and hyper-loquacious comedic dramas like “Kings and Queen” and “A Christmas Tale.” In that sense, this frigid misfire is most readily comparable to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “The Third Murder,” another flat genre flirtation from an otherwise reliable master.
Based on a killing that occurred in May of 2002, “Oh Mercy!” unfolds like an especially dull episode of “Law & Order: Roubaix.” The film begins on Christmas — not that the script Desplechin co-wrote with Léa Mysius...
Based on a killing that occurred in May of 2002, “Oh Mercy!” unfolds like an especially dull episode of “Law & Order: Roubaix.” The film begins on Christmas — not that the script Desplechin co-wrote with Léa Mysius...
- 5/22/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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