MOVIE REVIEW: Ismael’s Ghosts

French language drama starring Marion Cotillard and Mathieu Amalric.  A Screenwriter, who is about to embark on the shooting of a new film, has his whole life thrown into the blender when his wife, who has been missing presumed dead for 21 years, returns.

It’s time to remember last year and one of the better French language films of the whole 2017, and there were a few, but this one was a proper Hitchcock style love story with a thriller element thrown in for good measure.  I’m holding on to that memory, and the name of the film, which Amalric also starred in, was The Blue Room.  It was made in 2014 and yet we only got to see it last year.  That was a complicated, yet masterfully told, tale of twisted romance and murder.

Ismael’s Ghosts is just the most tedious and painful to watch film that I’ve seen this year.  The fact that Marion Cotillard gives her amazing standard performance just on the edge of insanity and reason, is the reason why I am giving this a one.  Amalric, to most of you he was the Villain in the Bond film Quantum of Solace, does his best with the script he is given but it’s exceptionally convoluted and in some cases idiotic.  He’s an ageing Screenwriter and Director, which a drink problem, writing a movie about his Brother who we’re led to believe is a spy or dead.  He’s moved on from the disappearance of his wife 21 years ago and found a new love.  When completing the script the missing wife, who has been declared dead, returns.  Cotillard plays the wife and her performance is just great.  She puts a spanner in the works of the new relationship and then the sanity of her Husband.

I’ll be honest with you, this was tough to get through, like really hard to sit there and try to keep tabs on what is going on through the running time which is about two and a half hours plus.  There are not enough breadcrumbs in the world to find your way home from this path.  I’d rather jump into the Witch’s house with Hansel and Gretel and happily sit in the oven myself.  Going from one timeline to another and back again, which some writers and Directors can do with ease, seems beyond the capabilities here.  It’s just left a whole mess of a film, there were one or two seasoned reviewers that even struggled to get through the running time, that’s all I’m saying.  Even I started to work out in my head if I left early would I make an earlier train, or would I care, leaving a question to what happened in the climax.

In the end I don’t care, and you probably won’t care either, with such good foreign language films coming out over the next few months I’m not going to even bother giving this much thought after I finish this review.  It’s already used up valuable space in my life and I’m not going to give it another minute.  So if you like good films just avoid this one and go see Infinity War, or something again, life’s too short for stuff like this!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

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Garth Cremona (RIP)

Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com

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