In Mathieu Amalric’s new film, Vicky Krieps plays a mother who tries to stay close to her family by running away.
Early one morning, Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) slips out of the house, climbs into the 1979 AMC Pacer that has been languishing under a tarp, and drives away, leaving behind her husband, Marc (Arieh Worthalter), and their two young children, Lucie (Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet) and Paul (Sacha Ardilly).
This act of maternal abandonment, at the beginning of Mathieu Amalric’s “Hold Me Tight,” stirs up some familiar emotions and questions. What is Clarisse running away from, or toward? Is this liberation or betrayal? The answers aren’t what you might expect. “Hold Me Tight” doesn’t depend on plot twists or dramatic revelations — the central mystery is resolved early on — but if you don’t want the beginning spoiled you may hesitate to read further.
This isn’t a movie about wanderlust or marital discontent; it’s about grief. Clarisse isn’t merely unhappy. Her world has been shattered, and her flight represents a desperate attempt to put it back together. She runs away from her family because she has already lost them, to a deadly avalanche during a ski vacation in Spain. Her departure keeps Paul, Lucie and Marc alive, in her mind and in front of our eyes, in a chronology that runs parallel to her wanderings.
They go on without her, the years of their lives filling the months she spends on the road, revisiting the scene of her family’s death and drifting from town to town. The kids grow up, with new actors (Juliette Benveniste and Aurèle Grzesik) playing the older versions. Lucie, a gifted musician, is an especially vivid presence. Her piano playing, which progresses from a halting attempt at Beethoven’s “Für Elise” to a commanding rendition of Ligeti’s “Musica Ricercata,” is an important element in the film’s story and a driver of its moods. Bowen-Chatet and Benveniste both actually play the music, which lends gravity and credibility to the character. “My daughter is Martha Argerich,” Clarisse declares after seeing some of a documentary about that Argentine virtuoso. For a moment, it sounds less like a fantasy born of bereavement than like a proud mother’s wishful boast.
Do Clarisse’s projections of the family’s life without her represent a coping mechanism or a form of denial? Amalric, adapting a play by Claudine Galea, seems less interested in the psychological implications of Clarisse’s behavior than in the structural and formal challenges her situation presents. He doesn’t mark a boundary between the real and the unreal, but rather treats them as equivalent, cutting from Clarisse to her family as if they were separated only by geography.
This generates a particular kind of suspense, as you wonder whether and how the two strands of the story might collide, and to what effect. When the climax arrives, it’s unnerving but also tidy. For all the intensity of Krieps’s performance and the power of the piano repertoire, “Hold Me Tight” proceeds through the mourning process with a strange detachment, using Clarisse’s agony as scaffolding for ideas about memory and storytelling that seem more imposed on life than pulled from it.
Hold Me Tight
Not rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
