dir. Claire Denis
writ. Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
feat. Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dog, Grégoire Colin
Lionel (Descas) and Joséphine (Diop) live quiet, busy lives, a father and daughter who have carved out a shared existence of love and support in the absence of other family. But hints of change and rebellion are in the air, and a man lurks outside the door of their apartment, a suitor with the filmmaker's suggestion of a home invader.
In Claire Denis' beautiful and tender tribute to Ozu, we find Descas in the traditional Chishu Ryu role as the aging parent and Diop filling in for Setsuko Hara, the devoted daughter who yearns for an independent life yet doesn't wish to abandon her lonely father. The film elegantly courts the threats of everyday life, two deaths haunting the story while little harm comes directly to our leads. Instead, intimate details shape and propel the tale: Joséphine's stumbling progress with Noé (the lurking suitor,) Lionel's harrowing vision of his future through a retired coworker, a visit to Joséphine's aunt that vaguely answers a few questions of family history.
The conflicts go unspoken, playing out in richly textured scenes of motion and emotion. As the substitute family of Lionel, Joséphine, Noé, and Gabrielle (Dogue as the unrequited lover of Lionel) get caught in the rain and take shelter in a cafe, the caged feelings escape. Noé makes his move on Joséphine, taking the daughter from the awkward father, pressing him to demonstrate his still thriving manhood with the cafe owner, and thus leaving Gabrielle out in the cold. In the time it takes to play "Night Shift" by the Commodores, the dynamic has changed forever, inevitable and irreversible shifts in these lives taking place in a moment out of time, in a placed they would have never visited if not for car trouble and bad weather.
It is this combination of the incessant flow of life and good intentions of the characters that imbue the film with such charm and power. Lives will move onward, but the love between father and daughter will remain.
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