How I Killed My Father

The last opus of Anne Fontaine is a combination of two influences: Oedipus complex and Nettoyage A Sec (Fontaine's previous film).

What it takes from the Oedipus story is of course the conflictual relationship between Charles Berling (the son) and Michel Bouquet (the father), and how Berling tries to 'kill' his father to affirm his own identity. From Nettoyage A Sec, the film takes his structure: how a seemingly ideal couple (Berling and Regnier) copes with the unexpected intrusion of the father.

If it were just for the acting, How I killed my Father would deserve a 10. Bouquet and Berling share an astounding intimacy on screen which interestingly happened off the set as well (they wrote a book of thoughts together just after the shoot). Regnier is surprisingly convincing in the beautiful up-class wife; what a versatility after her role in the Dreamlife of Angels when she was a young insecure squatter. However there is no special twist in the storyline, like one which made Nettoyage A Sec so disturbing...

To sum up, a good acting piece which failed to deliver in the drama.

This superb French film is at times so closed and contained, in spite of several outdoor scenes, that at times it comes close to being claustrophobic. This isn't a criticism;the same could be said of some of Bergman's great films. But, likes some of Bergman's films, its intensity can be overwhelming. I won't reveal much of the plot, but suffice it to say that it seems to be saying that, no matter what our achievements, for many if not most people, life is largely a matter of surviving, that is, surviving the damage inflicted in the early years, and minimizing the amount if damage we inflict on others. A masterful and painful film. 9/10

I was very interested to see the previous film of director Anne Fontaine before she did the excellent 'Nathalie'. 'Comment j'au tue mon pere' did not disappoint, although it may not be a easy film for everybody's taste.

Despite the title this is no detective story, and there is almost no physical violence in this movie. It is the world of the French middle-high class, people are polite and talk quiet. A well-doing doctor lives with his wife and his brother when their lives are changed by the arrival - as in a inverse parable - of the prodigal father, the one who left the boys as kids. Not only that the characters cannot re-do the time lost, but they do not seem to even look or express any affection. The emotions behind their cold masks are however not less stronger, with frustration and fear dominating the father-sons interaction.

The movie is very well acted with Michel Bouquet and Charles Berling giving powerful performances in the principal roles. Although the cinematography is a little banal, the movie is to be remembered for the intensity of the hidden conflicts, well brought to the screen.

How I Killed My Father (aka My Father and I) is a story about parental abandonment and filial rage, told in a very calm way. The characters hardly ever break a sweat as they deal with irresponsible fathers, feckless siblings, childlessness and the other griefs of life. The locale is, after all, Versailles, and the emotional temperature never gets above zero in those manicured gardens.

Jean-Luc invents a family for himself to replace the one he lost at the age of ten. He becomes a father substitute for his brother Patrick--imagine having your brother as chauffeur and gofer. He presides over this clinic for rich middle-aged people trying to regain their youth, much like a father and his children. If his wife is tiring of being an ornament, he can handle her moods: after all, he's got her believing she can't have kids. The mistress at the clinic can be kept happy by the promise of an apartment. The only thing he can't allow is to be abandoned by any of them.

The conflict with his father is the occasion for many droll exchanges between Charles Berling and Michel Bouquet. Jacques Fieschi, the co-author of this script, also wrote Un coeur en hiver, Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud and Sade, some of my favorite studies of bleak hearts in comfortable surroundings.

Many French films over the decades have begun with a voice, with or without images, one of the characters, usually the protagonist, speaking directly to the audience. "Comment j'ai tué mon père" begins with a male voice speaking, over blank-screen credits, about the trials of late middle age. Since our only other info has been the film's first-person title, when the bearded speaker materializes we assume he's our protagonist. He's just young enough to have a living parent, maybe one about to die. When the camera pulls back to reveal the gerontologist listening, we see this secondary figure as a prop, a movie cliché. But a cut disillusions. The speaker will never reappear. It's the gerontologist's story.

Director Anne Fontaine's slight of hand continues throughout the film, so pervasively that it's difficult to go on here with giving away too much. It's far from only the gerontologist's story. At least three characters, not counting the opening speaker above, carry the point of view. Yet it's not "Rashomon." Perhaps appropriate in a film about aging, with a gerontologist dead center, the time line seldom wavers.