'Wild Grass' is a beautiful yet messy tale of longing

The newest romantic drama from 88-year-old French filmmaker Alain Resnais is at times confounding, achingly beautiful, tedious and clever. "Wild Grass" is a great-looking, emotionally messy motion picture.

"Wild Grass" is all over the place, especially in matters of the heart. This is intended to be a controlled chaos as presented by Resnais, an old master whose romantic dramas "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" (1959) and "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961) were best foreign-language film Academy Award nominees in their day.

He's still exploring those places that the human heart goes when it's in disarray, in an adaptation of Christian Gailly's novel that follows the entanglements that form when a woman's wallet is stolen.

That a man finds the discarded wallet and turns it in to the police seems a simple enough story. For most of us, the story would be over at this point. But this is merely a jumping-off point for a gorgeously photographed, existentialist tale of longing.

The overall arc of the script is certainly that of not only a missing wallet, but of people who are all missing something valuable in their lives. But I could never quite tell where the story was heading.

The predictable is confounded repeatedly as Georges (AndÅ•e Dussollier of "Tell No One") desperately attempts to meet the woman whose wallet he found. Unpredictable is a good quality in films; unfocused is not.

Marguerite (Sabine Azéma, Resnais' real-life companion) has no such interest in meeting Georges - until an act of vandalism, an odd phone call and her own yearnings compel this shoe-buying, airplane-flying dentist to seek an adventure.

These mysterious characters remain perplexing throughout - cold, detached and distant are equal descriptions - and I found I didn't engage their stories more because they weren't better defined. But Resnais' camera makes the journey a colorful, playful trip through cinematic techniques.

There are fantasy moments. There are inner monologues (Marguerite berates herself for buying more shoes; we watch as Georges practices his phone-call voice like a teen calling for a date). Lighting colors change as people's emotions alter.

These aren't merely flights of filmmaking fancy, but veteran flourishes that frame a heady, often distracting mix of melancholy, light comedy and moments both romantic and disturbing.

These curious avenues traveled by the film may induce those who dismiss French films out of hand to cite the picture as an example of why they do so. But for others, "Wild Grass" may slowly grow on you.

WILD GRASS

Stars: Andre Dussollier, Sabine Azéma, Anne Consigny, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric

Theater: Circle Cinema

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Rated: PG (some thematic material, language and brief smoking)

Quality:

(on a scale of zero to four stars)

Note: in French with English subtitles

Michael Smith 581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com

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'Wild Grass' is a beautiful yet messy tale of longing

The newest romantic drama from 88-year-old French filmmaker Alain Resnais is at times confounding, achingly beautiful, tedious and clever. "Wild Grass" is a great-looking, emotionally messy motion picture.

WILD GRASS

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