Movies - Sunday, September 20
The Age
Thursday September 17, 2009
Janis and John (2003)SBS Two, 9.30pmPABLO Sterni (Sergi Lopez) is married to Brigitte (Marie Trintignant) and works in a Swiss insurance company, where he manages overpriced policies sold to the easily defrauded. He begins cheating the system, writing a fake policy for an old man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and pocketing the cash. His actions reek of 1970s countercultural self-delusion (remember how every act of theft was a protest against the capitalist patriarchy?) as does much of the film. This is never more apparent than when Pablo sees "John Lennon" and "Janis Joplin" in the loo of a dingy nightclub run by a former LSD addict (Christopher Lambert). Given the presence of Marie Trintignant, the fact the film was directed by her husband, Samuel Benchetrit, and that she was murdered by her French rock-star boyfriend three months after it was completed, it is inevitable any review of the film becomes about her. Trintignant always had a quixotic allure, in part perhaps because her twin sister died young, leaving Trintignant speechless €” acting was an attempt to bring her out of her shyness. Watching Trintignant here is near unbearable, especially when her Brigitte is shouted at by an on-screen husband. There is also the aged and iconic presence of Trintignant's father, Jean-Louis. So many years have passed since he was the outrageously pretty youth of And God Created ... Woman. It feels as if too much life is passing us by and that some people were cruelly given too little of it. SCOTT MURRAY
© 2009 The Age
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