Les volets bleus

Kinda half-baked short finds Brigitte Lahaie meeting up with former college lover Jacques Mandrea and trying to rekindle their affair. The film is little more than the two walking around a seaside town and then going back to Mandrea's college apartment (the one with The Blue Shutters) and trading a lot of Catherine Breillat-style banter. This is a typical French convention, but the problem is it starts to get exhausting after a while - it's affected and people don't really talk like this (nor is the film caustic enough, cf. Breillat, to make it that memorable). Lahaie is constantly forced to flip emotions on a dime, going from flirtatious to bitter and resentful over and over again. It's an effective trick the first time or two, but the problem is it's all the short's got from an emotional standpoint. The piece is well made and shows promise, both from the creative team as well as the two leads, who each give nice performances. I'd love to see them all attempt a script that had a few more tricks up its sleeve.