04/11/2010

Escaping the banality of everyday life, severing all links, assuming a new identity, launching into the artistic activity he has always dreamed of, travelling without ties, in short, being reborn: this is the fate awaiting the protagonist of Eric Lartigau’s compelling and dramatic film The Big Picture [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Adapted from US writer Douglas Kennedy’s same-named best-seller, this EuropaCorp production, which was released yesterday on French and Belgian screens, is being presented out of competition today at the Rome International Film Festival.

"The hardest moment was when I realised that I had no future". This admission from the boss (Catherine Deneuve) of a Paris-based business law firm to her partner Paul Exben (Romain Duris) resonates with the thirty-something’s seemingly comfortable life. Exiled in a smart suburb in the Yvelines with his wife (Marina Foïs) and two children, where he jogs on a treadmill and accumulates photographic equipment (photography being his passion), Paul is going through a relationship crisis.

Suspecting his divorce-demanding, bitter wife ("failures attract failures") of infidelity, he finds out the identity of her lover: a neighbour he loathes, a semi-professional photographer with a private income. The confrontation between the two gets out of hand: Paul accidentally kills the man. This episode marks the film’s sharp transition from a classic French marital melodrama to a European thriller behind which lies a "metaphysical" search for identity.

Fear of prison makes desperate Paul react very quickly. Staging his own disappearance and removing all traces of the "crime", he gets himself a passport by borrowing the identity of the dead man whose corpse he transports from the freezer to a port in Brittany where his boat awaits him. He also leaves false trails via email to give the impression his victim has gone away to do a photo-report. In reality, his body ends up at the bottom of the ocean, while Paul fakes his own death by blowing up his boat.

Free at last: from now on he is Grégoire Kremer, a photographer. Taking to the road, he travels across Europe until he reaches Montenegro where he gradually rebuilds his life until his burgeoning reputation as an artist leads to the threat of his past catching up with him.

Haunted by suspicion and the paranoia of loneliness, The Big Picture strikes a clever balance between the guilt of erasing one’s past and the lure of the unknown, between middle-class life in Western Europe and the wilder beauty of the Balkans, between contemplative psychological exploration ("who am I in the end? ") and thrilling action.

This cocktail is pulled off thanks to an imaginative adaptation (despite a few shortcuts and rather simplistic symbols), meticulous direction, well-paced editing and an actor who confirms his extraordinary talent. It is also a brilliant achievement by screenwriter-director Lartigau who proves he is equally at ease with a dramatic thriller as he was with a hit comedy (Rent A Wife [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). His is a career to watch.

(Translated from French)