Alice et Martin
France/Spain/USA 1998
Reviewed by Chris Darke
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Ten-year-old Martin Sauvagnac's mother encourages him to visit his father Victor whom he's never met before. Although illegitimate, Martin stays and grows up with his half-brothers: François, Frédéric and Benjamin. Ten years pass. Martin flees the family house after the death of his father. After living rough he turns up at Benjamin's Paris flat which he shares with his friend Alice. Martin moves in and becomes a model. He and Alice become a couple.
While visiting Spain, Alice tells Martin she's pregnant. He collapses and is hospitalised. They move into a small cottage by the sea where he recovers. Terrified by fatherhood, Martin reveals to Alice the cause of his father's death. When François committed suicide, Martin planned to leave, unable to participate in the family's grief. In a struggle with Victor, Martin accidentally pushed him down the stairs.
Convinced he's guilty of murder, Martin has himself committed to a psychiatric clinic. Alice tries to deliver a letter from him to his stepmother Lucie but encounters obstruction from Frédéric. Martin decides to hand himself over to the police and asks Lucie to testify as a witness. Benjamin tells Alice that, because of Frédéric's political ambitions, the family is obliged to testify and Martin will be tried. Alice returns to Paris and Martin is discharged from the clinic. He turns himself over to the police and is detained. Alice waits for the birth of their child.
Review
With his thirteenth feature, André Téchiné conducts a masterly dissection of male hysteria. From the outset Martin, the illegitimate son of a wealthy provincial bourgeois family, is damaged goods. The short opening sequence sketching his childhood has Martin attempting to persuade his father he's ill. Victor Sauvagnac, the cold, business-like patriarch who sired Martin on a local hairdresser and then denied his existence for ten years, refuses to believe him. From here on in the film charts first the symptoms and then the causes of Martin's frail psychological state.
In fact, most of the major characters are scarred by family histories. After his father's death - shown in a lengthy flashback - Martin flees into the countryside where he hides like a hunted animal, eventually making his way to Paris where he meets his half-brother Benjamin's flatmate Alice. An initially brittle and impatient presence, she describes the curious interloper as "an extra-terrestrial hobo". Alice herself is psychologically delicate; her sister died young, leaving her to negotiate warring feelings of residual grief and filial jealousy. But her life with Benjamin, a struggling gay actor played by Mathieu Amalric as the livewire black sheep of the Sauvagnac family, has allowed them both to find an asexual equilibrium. "We take turns at being each other's child," is Benjamin's analysis of their relationship. Nonetheless, this quasi-parental affection transmutes into barely repressed anger and bitterness when Alice and Martin become a couple and the causes of his distress emerge. Téchiné has been here before, most recently in Les Voleurs, where he explored the internal dynamics of a crime dynasty. It was the generic element of that film which felt a little forced but its family resemblance to Alice et Martin is clear. There's the same concern with an oppressive family inheritance, but here the issues of law and 'the family business' are more subtly interrelated.
Téchiné explicitly treats the film as a case study. When Alice asks Martin to tell her about his 'flight' from the family, she uses the French word fugue. The word carries a psychoanalytic connotation, describing the state in which a subject loses awareness of his identity and flees his usual environment. Indeed, the film is another French examination of a young man's growth, via crisis, to responsibility and maturity. Martin's anxieties are triggered by Alice's pregnancy, which unleashes a double-barrelled stock of guilt relating to his half-brother François' suicide and Martin's 'parricide'. Téchiné structurally underscores this by having the explanatory flashback begin the moment Martin touches Alice's growing belly.
Dense and powerful in its emotional force, Alice et Martin's melodrama is tempered by superb performances. Newcomer Alexis Loret is shifty, pale and sympathetic as Martin, while Juliette Binoche (whom Téchiné directed once before in Rendez-vous, 1985, early in her career) develops Alice with a charged finesse, undertaking her quest with the full realisation that she too has a path to adult love before her, via Martin's self-realisation. If this is literary film-making it is the best kind, from the richness of its characterisation to the acuity of its structure. Both a cold melodrama and a psyched-up Bressonian case study, Alice et Martin is a masterly opening-up of classical French intimiste themes.
Credits
- Producer
- Alain Sarde
- Screenplay/Dialogue
- André Téchiné
- Gilles Taurand
- with the collaboration of Olivier Assayas
- Director of Photography
- Caroline Champetier
- Editor
- Martine Giordano
- Production Designer
- Ze Branco
- Music
- Philippe Sarde
- ©Les Films Alain Sarde/Vertigo Films/France 2 Cinéma/France 3 Cinéma
- Production Companies
- Alain Sarde presents a co-production of Les Films Alain Sarde/Vertigo Films/France 2 Cinéma/France 3 Cinéma
- With the participation of Canal +/Studio Images 4
- Associate Producer Kuzui Enterprises
- Spanish Co-producer
- Andres Martin
- Production Managers
- Jean-Jacques Albert
- Yvon Crenn
- Unit Production Managers
- Didier Carrel
- Réynald Calcagni
- Catherine Pierrat
- Nathalie Freige
- Unit Managers
- Bruno Bernard
- Pierre-Jean Robert
- Aymeric De Valon
- Olivier Bulteau
- Spain:
- Maite Fernandez
- Assistant Directors
- Michel Nasri
- Sandra Mainguene
- Aude Lemercier
- Spain:
- Martin Coffier
- Script Supervisor
- Claudine Taulère
- Casting
- Michel Nasri
- Stéphane Foekinos
- Jacques Grant
- Benedicte Guiho
- 2nd Camera
- Germain Desmoulins
- Storyboard
- Lionel Pouchard
- Costume Designer
- Elisabeth Tavernier
- Costumes
- Khadija Ziccai
- Key Make-up
- Thi-Loan N'guyen
- Special Effects Make-up
- Dominique Colladant
- Kuno Schlegelmilch
- Key Hair
- Isabelle Luzet
- Titles/Opticals
- Microfilms
- Soloists
- Flute:
- Georges Alirol
- Clarinet:
- Bruno Martinez
- Orchestrations
- Hubert Bougis
- Music Co-ordination
- La Bande Son
- Music Engineer
- John Timperley
- Music Recordist
- Nat Peck
- Soundtrack
- "Tea for Two" by Vincent Youmans, Irving Caesar; "Kalina Malina" arranged by Corinne Hache, performed by Quintette Tres&Dos; "Lilac Wine" by James H. Shelton, performed by Jeff Buckley; "Toccata per l'elevazione in FA Minore" by Pasquale Cafaro; "You're So Good to Me" by Brian Wilson, performed by Beach Boys; "Laura's Theme" by/performed by Craig Armstrong; "La Rupture" by/performed by Yann Tiersen; "Woman of the World" by Neil Hannon, performed by Divine Comedy; "Enti rahti" by Abderrahmane Amrani, performed by Rachid Taha; "Temporal" by Escoriza, Sanchez Duenas, performed by Radio Tarifa; "Once in a Lifetime" by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, performed by Wasis Diop; "Disco 2000" by MarkAndrew Webber, Jarvis Cocker, Steve Mackey, Candida Doyle, Russell Senior, Nicholas David Banks, performed by Pulp; "Le Sport roi" by Michel Etcheverry; "Michelangelo 70" by Astor Piazzolla
- Tango Choreography
- Jorge Rodriguez
- Sound
- Jean-Paul Mugel
- Jean-Pierre Laforce
- Michel Klochendler
- Dialogue Editors
- Martine Planchard Gazai
- Muriel Moreau
- Sound Effects
- Jérôme Levy
- Jean-Noël Yven
- Sound Effects Recording
- Anne Le Campion
- Eric Ferret
- Post-synchronization
- Jean-Louis Le Bras
- Olivier Burgaud
- Studio Lincoln
- Violin Coach
- Cyril Garac
- Stunts
- Patrick Steltzer
- Animal Trainer
- Michel Flaesch
- Cast
- Juliette Binoche
- Alice
- Alexis Loret
- Martin Sauvagnac
- Mathieu Amalric
- Benjamin Sauvagnac
- Carmen Maura
- Jeanine Sauvagnac
- Jean-Pierre Lorit
- Frédéric
- Marthe Villalonga
- Lucie
- Pierre Maguelon
- Victor Sauvagnac
- Eric Kreikenmayer
- François Sauvagnac
- Jeremy Kreikenmayer
- Martin, as a boy
- Kevin Goffette
- Christophe
- Christiane Ludot
- Laurence
- Véronique Rioux
- Corinne Hache
- Mauricio Angarita
- Lilite Guegamian
- Thierry Barone
- musicians
- Ruth Malka-Viellet
- Tania de Fécang
- Jocelyn Henriot
- Tania's assistant
- Patrick Goavec
- the doctor
- Emmanuel Marcandier
- young husband
- Thomas Vallegeas
- neighbour
- Eric Hewson-Schmit
- photographer
- Nathalie Vignes
- the nurse
- Franck de LaPersonne
- examining magistrate
- Roschdy Zem
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- 11,188 feet
- 124 minutes 19 seconds
- Digital DTS sound / Dolby
- In Colour
- Subtitles