Je rentre à la maison

Manuel de Oliveira is the film director of the details. The camera is always very slow with him and much concentrated on visual details, immobile images and dialogues. Each one of these however, has its meaning sometimes poetic and contributes to introduce the spectator deeply into the atmosphere of the story. Remember for instance the scene when the old actor, after having bought and put on a pair of new yellow shoes that he liked very much, is talking to someone else at a café and while the dialogue goes on we almost never see his face since the camera focuses his feet all the time and the movements he makes with his shoes like an element of his personality. This is the story of an old actor at the end of his career still trying to work after the violent death of his wife, daughter and son-in-law in a road accident that left him in charge of his little grandson. Michel Piccoli does a great job in the role of the aging actor and we can feel all along the movie the feelings that take place in his mind on the one hand in his difficult relationship with his agent about what the latter tries to demand from him and on the other hand in his tender relationship with his grandson at home though they don't see much of each other due to to their divergent hours. A movie really worth to be seen.

I like to think of myself as a movie buff, but I'm not. I am a novice, in training. I had never heard of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira but it turns out he is 93 years old, still active and has therefore been making films for most of the era of "talkie" cinema. So, "I'm Going Home". This is a film I would never have dreamed of going to see. I ended up at the cinema by default without realising that it would change my view on a lot of things and make me feel better without realising that I felt down.

I had no idea or preconceptions of what this would be like. The only person I was familiar with was John Malkovich (sp?) I'll get back to him later.

The film starts off with a play, and it's a play I would love to see. The audience (in the film) watching the play are enjoying it immensely and it is obvious that Gilbert Valence (the wonderful wonderful Michel Piccoli)is a well known stage actor, much loved by his French audience. Valence comes off stage to huge applause but then receives the worst kind of life-changing news.

Cuts to "some time later" We hear no dialogue from him until we see him in his next play. This is clever- unless he is on the stage, we only see him from an outsider's point of view. He is in a bar and we can see him talking and ordering but all we can hear is the white noise of Parisian traffic. And then vice-versa so for a while, he is always on the other side of the window to us.

He meets his agent who is a partonising, unsympathetic character. Valence doesn't understand why he keeps offering him roles he would never take. Valence feels out of sorts with society. His world has been reduced and he is surrounded by people he doesn't understand and whom in turn, don't understand him.

Enter John Malkovich. He is John Crawford a director of a Franco/American production company who desperately needs Valence to be in his new version of Ulysses (James Joyce you idiot!) (no, I've never read it either). His opening speech to Valence is a text book example of tactlessness and I wonder if M. de Oliveria has often found himself on the receivng end of the same, ageist treatment

My favourite scene is when Valence is trying his absolute hardest to get the part right. Malkovich is trying to keep his cool but is obviously getting infuriated with this poor frenchman who is trying to read an English-speaking part in an Irish accent (which he has three days to prepare for). The scene consists of a close-up of Malkovich's face as he winces and squirms, looks hopeful then despairs again, whilst we listen to the sound of Valence doing his best in a part that he wasn't born to play.

The film is full of so much apart from the story line and gives much food for thought on leaving the cinema. Is he really so out of sorts with the world? How can he be, when his grandson adores him completely and young girls find him very attractive (a fact that he finds hard to deal with)? Surely it is the bad side of modern society that he can't cope with in the same way the rest of us can barely cope either?

There are also shots in this picture that would make Martin Scorsese drool. I won't bother describing any because that never works, but if I noticed them, they must be good!

I probably make it sound like a melancholy old-duffer movie but it isn't. The dialogue is sharp and often very-funny, there are nice little sub-plots and elegant touches such as people drinking in sync with each other except for Valence. Subtle stuff that you have to watch out for.

I won't give the (abrupt, but for a reason) ending away but the way the title is used- it's something we can all relate to and wish we done ourselves!

"I'm Going Home" - a heady subtitled French character study and contemplation which focuses on a bereaved and aging thespian, Valence (Piccoli) - consumes huge chunks of time as we watch the protag perform on stage, buy shoes, get mugged, get made up for a movie, flub his lines, etc. Deneuve and Malkovich are on screen for a heartbeat and the whole messy death of his family thing is skipped over in deference to the lengthy scenes. I was surprised when the film abruptly ended with no climax, no denouement, and no warning...just poof, credits rolling. The bottom line here is this is not much of a movie by the standards of ordinary filmgoers. However, it is fodder for cinematic devotees, critics and industry people, pedants and dilettantes, etc. If you care about such trivia as the director was 90+ years of age, then you may want to give this film a look. If you just want entertainment, think twice. (B)

Note: Being surprised when the film ended is a good thing. That meant I was sufficiently engrossed as to not be watching the clock. For what it's worth and it's not much, I enjoyed this film a lot.

"Je rentre a la maison" opens on the stage of a rather seedy theatre in Paris during the closing act of Ionesco's absurdist drama "Exit the King" - exit the king indeed!

Portraying the old king is Gilbert Valence (Michel Piccoli), a well known Parisian actor, who like the king is coming to the end of his career. Piccoli no sooner steps off stage than a group of somber friends deliver to him the bad news that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have just been killed in an auto accident. All that now remains of his family is his young grandson.

In this remarkably understated film Oliveira uses long takes, a rarely moving camera, and natural background sounds to emphasize what's going on in the faces of his actors. After a summer of films like "Fast and Furious," "Rat Race," and "Rush Hour 2" it is a relief to be able to slow down and indulge in the more subtle nuances of the filmic art.

One of the movie's most treasured moments occurs when Piccoli is cast in an English-language film based on James Joyce's novel, "Ulysses." Appearing in a cameo role as the director of this movie-within-a-movie is John Malkovich who takes full advantage of Oliveira's long take close-ups of him as he sadly watches Piccoli having difficulties with his lines. The last shot in the film is also a long take of the face of Piccoli's grandson as he watches his grandfather pause on the landing while making his way up the stairs to his room.

"Je rentre a la maison" is a low-key version of Scott Hicks' more thickly romantic, "Hearts in Atlantis," which has a similar theme.

It´s amazing how Manoel de Oliveira, who's 93 years old, accomplishes so much in this film using so little. The story is quite simple and there´s nothing very unusual about the characters. But the film captures the audience´s attention in a remarkable way. We get to know so much about the characters that sometimes we feel that we´re reading a book, when the author has pages and pages to tell everything about them. Michel Picoli plays a successful stage actor who, after losing wife, daughter and son-in-law in a car accident, learns to overcome his grief bringing his young grandson to live with him. Manuel de Oliveira doesn't use exciting camera angles nor spectacular takes. Everything is quite simple in his film. It's the simplicity of a master, who knows perfectly well what's he's doing. Acting is superlative. Picoli's work is on the level of the best performances of Ingmar Bergman's actors. And, of course, there's John Malkovich, with very few lines but an enormous intensity, in the role of an American film director who's shooting a movie version of James Joyce's "Ulysses". This is one of the most intelligent, delicate and touching films I've seen in many years.