A father with a drug problem tries to reconnect with his daughter.
Mia Hansen-Love’s latest film, “Bergman Island,” is a simultaneously enigmatic and provocative treatment of the knotty intertwining of life and art. Her first feature, “All Is Forgiven,” from 2007, is getting its U.S. debut this week, and it confirms that the writer-director’s beguiling (and to some, confounding) cinematic voice was all but fully mature from the start.
For its first two-thirds, “All Is Forgiven” commits to an impartial portrayal of Victor (Paul Blain, rock-star charismatic), a would-be writer and feckless recreational drug user. Bouncing between Vienna and Paris with his Austrian partner, Annette (Marie-Christine Friedrich), and their precious 6-year-old daughter, Pamela, Victor finds that descending into full-time junkiedom is like falling off a log. His love for his wife and daughter is sincere, but in the face of his need for heroin, it ceases to matter. His dishonesty is unblinking and his violence unthinking. Hansen-Love depicts it all without a flinch.
The movie then jumps 10 years ahead. As with her film “Eden” (2015), the director does nothing to visibly age her adult actors; the space they inhabit is a circumscribed cinematic one, not a simulation of a realistic timeline. But Pamela has grown into a teenager (played by Constance Rousseau, the older sister of Victoire Rousseau, who plays the character as a child), and a now-cleaned-up Victor is eager to reconnect with her. Intrigued but cautious, Pamela agrees to meet, over her mother’s objections.
Those familiar with Hansen-Love’s other films will not be too surprised that her scenario withholds certain story components that other directors might consider essential. Her movies have a delicacy of style that can make them seem gossamer-thin at first. But the atmosphere the director creates, once fully breathed in, has an emotional gravity that becomes devastating as it settles.
All Is Forgiven
Not rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and on Metrograph’s virtual cinema.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
