‘Ma Vie, Ma Gueule’ by the Late Director Sophie Fillières

To say that Barberie Bichette, the character marvelously played by Agnes Jaoui in the late Sophie Fillière’s Ma Vie, Ma Gueule (This Life of Mine), is a woman at the end of her tether would be a gross understatement. She seems to have let go of the tether and lost sight of it completely. She’s a victim of a multiple whammy. First, age: Ms. Jaoui has left behind any semblance of make-up, so that face and body are exposed down to every blemish and wrinkle. That age can be cruel is a cliché, but with much truth to it (that’s how it became a cliché). She’s separated, though we don’t know when or how, never see the ex, or hear if he’s remarried. She lives apart from her children. She gets along well with her eldest, a personable, intelligent young man named Junior. Her daughter Rose is a classic sullen adolescent, and relations are painfully strained. Barberie’s mother is deceased, and now her father has fallen very ill. She’s at the breaking point, and sadly, she breaks — or at least cracks.

We follow Barberie’s aimless encounters at a gym club, accidentally surprising her daughter in a park, observing herself in a mirror, speaking with her shrink. Gradually the episodes turn more disturbing: a hostile encounter with a pair of girls pretending to collect money for the deaf, writing poetry on a large roll of paper in the metro, meeting an old friend she refuses to remember. She eventually seems like one of the crazies we see in Paris and other large cities, wandering the streets and talking mostly to no one.

These scenes are well done, genuinely unsettling, and Ms. Jaoui is extraordinarily effective. She’s not an award-winning actress, screenwriter and director for nothing. But convincing as she is, there are plausibility problems. Many of us know the dire problems of age, marital break-up, parents passing. It’s an ordeal, but normally not to this degree. Yes, everyone is different — many complain of being burnt out, but I know of one person whose burn-out took her into a psychiatric ward. Still, we sense some missing link, but the director doesn’t give us any inkling as to what that is.

Barberie doesn’t get much help from the professionals. The scenes with her laconic psychiatrist are acerbically funny. When she collapses after meeting the old but forgotten friend, and he checks her in at a hospital, the doctors and nurses are also portrayed as clueless, if not indifferent. The one redeeming activity there is a craft workshop, where she makes a sculpture — a bust of herself.

Art — poetry and sculpture — is supposedly the saving grace of Barberie’s life. But in concrete fact it doesn’t work that way. We realize that art may be part of her problem. Her poetry takes her ever deeper into herself, and allows her to consign life to the status of one more fantasy. At least the bust is solidly material, and accessible to others. The most uplifting parts of the film is when Barberie interacts with her children — even when relations are difficult she doesn’t seem as alienated as she is with others, distorting them with her mind. An oddly moving scene is when she discovers the cigarette Rose has surreptitiously placed in the mouth of her sculpture.

Aside from Ms. Jaoui, always powerful, and bravely revealing both physically and emotionally, Edouard Sulpice as Junior, Angelina Woreth as Rose, are never less than believable. As in real families the sibs have utterly different personalities, different ways of relating to their mother, and yet love not only her but each other. On the other hand, we never get any information about their outer lives: Are they living with their father? Do they live with others? With each other? What is the son, who’s older, doing for a living or studying? We can’t help feeling that the protagonist, and the director, have dismissed all of life outside the closed circle of Barberie’s immediate emotional purview. This is reflected in how Ms. Fillière films. Many close-ups, three-quarter shots. Rarely does she pull back to show her heroine embedded in her environment and with other people.

The key to this is lies in biography. Ms. Fillière tragically died last year after a long illness. The protagonist of her last film is apparently her alter-ego. When we consider a woman and artist confronted with imminent mortality, everything takes on a different tint. I didn’t look into her biography in enough detail to know exactly in what condition she made her film. In any case, the film itself depicts Barberie’s situation as emotional, not physical and existential.

We understand better when she decides to go to the highlands of Scotland to visit, buy a postage-stamp of property as part of a novelty land scheme, and see an old friend of hers.  (She remembers the other friend, even if Barberie still doesn’t.) There are twists. She makes personal contact, but not only with the friend. She’s permitted to visit her personal plot of green earth, but not to camp out on it. The spectacular scenery, rugged but gorgeous, is beautifully filmed. Barberie comes to the end of the road, but on her own terms. This is a very poignant movie, but may leave you somewhat perplexed, unless curiosity leads you to look further, as it did me.

Production: Christmas in July/Jour2fête/The Party Film Sales

Distribution: Jour2fête