I am not sure how many new waves there are in french cinema. At least two, and Ozon is considered in one of them and not the first one, because then he was hardly born. This is the first time I have watched one of his movies, to the best of my knowledge, and I was not sure what to expect.
A middleaged, upper middle class, french literature teacher, is generally disappointed about the state of the present youth and their lack of ability to express themselves in a literary form. He used to be an author but never had any success and he is basically a half-bitter nobody, slaving away in a dreary position in a highschool.
Then one day, one of the young male students delivers a piece that intrigues him. The student actually has a bit of talent and a bold attitude to writing. And when the paper ends with "to be continued", he is eager to see the follow up. The young man attaches himself to one of his fellow students and is invited back at their home to help figuring out some advanced mathematics.
The student uses his experiences during visits at this "low life" family to write new chapters in his story, and tension builds as his attraction to the mother starts to take shape. The teacher involves his wife, who runs an unsuccessful modern art gallery, in reading each new chapters in the story and both of them gets absorbed in the story and the possibility of spying on the privacy of a strange family, in a sort of artistic platonic way.
All the hypocrisy and unfulfilled ambitions and desires are exposed through the writings of the young man, of both the unknowing host family and the projected ambition of the teacher and his desperate wife. But the boldness of the young man and his teacher inevitably takes some dangerous turns and necessary consequences are bound to befall them before the next step of their lives can be taken.
Though I usually never really take too much notice of the plot, this one really impressed me. It was both pretty straight forward and very complicated. It is a clever way of telling a whole loty of different stories at once and the level of the ambition had me set up for for huge expectations.
But they did not really materialise in the fashion I hoped for. The plot was too ambitious for the ability of the actors combined with the at times slightly sloppy directing, for everything to hold together to the finish line.
The acting is decent if a little on the discrete side when it should be more engaging. The young male actor seems not really to be present enough in the scenes where he is the focal point. At first I thought it was because it was supposed to be the teacher that was the central aspect, and maybe it is after all. but the young student has huge parts opposite him, and he does not burn through enough for me to engage in his arc, which is rather thin.
The second act feels stretched out too much before anything really happens to push the story forward and then it has to finish off. In the end I am left with rather thin story and a pretty unrealistic plot. The director tries to save it a bit using a mix of normal shots combined with afterthoughts where the teacher suddenly pops up from under the table, so that the viewer lodses track of what he is supposed to understand a scene and maybe stitch it all together in a viable form in his head.
It is one of those movies where I really felt at home from the get go and really wanted it to be a great experience, but it did not manage to flesh itself out and looses too much steam in the end to bring everything together in an engaging, cohesive manner. The initial plot idea is really good and has a lot of potential with great actors and in a skilled director´s hands, but it not nearly enough here to raise to that upper level of cinema.
It is recommended for its good setup and an overall decent execution without reaching expected heights.
7/10
