REVIEWS


Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com


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You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! Reviewed by Jonathan Romney


COMPETITION


It’s a mischievous title from a director approaching 90, for what has been announced as his last film. But Alain Resnais’ consistently surprising swan- song sets out to argue that the auteur often has the last word, in matters of art — if not in those of life and death. Based on two plays by Jean Anouilh (Eurydice and Cher Antoine), You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! is a self-reflexive hall-of-mirrors number that not only stages a dialogue between film and thea- tre, but also, like Anouilh, plays modernity against antiquity. In addition, it takes in multiple echoes of Resnais’ work, as the director looks back over past achievements and questions still unanswered. You Ain’t… shows the venerable innovator on


vital form, and while it is nowhere near as barmy as his last feature, Wild Grass, it is still a film of bris- tling intelligence that will delight lovers of cerebral upmarket cinema. That said, its audience will be limited, given its unapologetically rarefied tenor. Outside France, this will be a niche film, and indeed a festival film, par excellence. The film begins with a series of close-ups show-


ing various actors (including Wilson, Azéma and Piccoli), playing themselves, being told their friend Antoine has died and that they are invited to hear his will. Assembled at his cavernous mansion, the 13 actors are shown to a screening theatre, where a filmed Antoine (Denis Podalydes) explains that a young theatre group has asked to produce his play Eurydice, and it is up to the thesps (who had all once performed in the play themselves) to decide whether it is still worth a spin. As the play is shown on film, the watching actors


n 10 Screen International at Cannes May 22, 2012


Fr-Ger. 2012. 115mins Director Alain Resnais Production companies F Comme Film, StudioCanal, France 2 Cinema, Alamode Filmdistribution, Christmas In July International sales StudioCanal, www.studiocanal.com Producer Jean-Louis Livi Screenplay Laurent Herbiet, Alex Reval, based on two plays by Jean Anouilh Cinematography Eric Gautier Production designer Jacques Saulnier Editor Hervé de Luze Music Mark Snow Main cast Mathieu Amalric, Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azéma, Anne Consigny, Michel Piccoli, Lambert Wilson


eventually take over and Antoine’s mansion turns into the various locales of the play. At face value, the film is an opportunity to give


some eminent actors a spin with Anouilh’s brittle modernisation of Greek tragedy, and as such You Ain’t… offers rich pleasures for admirers of French stage acting — in particular Pierre Arditi, Anne Consigny and Mathieu Amalric. Resnais’ tricks range from the simplest stage


illusion to more elaborate CGI, while the story con- stantly switches between film and drama, and between the various levels of fiction (the two Anouilh plays; the ‘reality’ of the framing narra- tive; the original Greek myth), with two sets of actors playing out Eurydice, and two sets of Orpheuses (Arditi and Wilson) and Eurydices (Consigny and Azéma) in the film. Deconstructing narrative, temporal and spatial coherence alike, Resnais leaves only the dramatic text intact. Resnais-watchers are bound to see this as a knowing footnote to his career. Essentially a ghost


story (shades of Last Year In Marienbad), and one that echoes his multi-layered Life Is A Bed Of Roses, the film is his latest variant on the theatrical explo- rations of his Alan Ayckbourn films (notably Smok- ing/No Smoking), as well as a reprise of the musings on life and death in Providence. And there is a poster for Hiroshima Mon Amour in there too. Unashamedly experimental, the film has glow-


ingly atmospheric photography by Eric Gautier and imposingly protean design by Jacques Saul- nier. It is also a triumph for editor Hervé de Luze, orchestrating a dizzying system of tightly synchro- nised cuts, iris shots, split screens, intertitles and so on. The film is slippery right up to the minor- key coda, and the final touch, a Frank Sinatra song over the end credits, is a lovely melancholy sign- off from a venerable auteur whose intellectual and philosophical energies are undimmed.


SCREEN SCORE ★★★


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