If you walked out of this year’s Oscar darling The Artist feeling that what it really could have done with were a few more arse shots, the odd misogynistic zinger and a pervasive sense of sexual despair, this multi-stranded Franco-com just might serve you well. Artist helmer Michel Hazanavicius even directs one of the nine short films that comprise The Players, each centring on the theme of adultery with slants ranging from absurdist to witty to bleak.
What they all are is deeply irreverent, as evidenced by the controversy sparked by the film and its poster following its debut in France earlier this year. While there’s undeniably a streak of misogyny at its centre by virtue of its flippantly unfaithful characters, there’s also a healthy dose of equal contempt for them – you’d struggle to make a case for this as a glamorised view of either adultery or sex. What’s likely to prove more of a problem is the unwelcome shift Dujardin’s role presents for those who enjoyed him as suave, winning silent star George Valentin, who retained his matinee idol polish even throughout a personal and professional downward spiral.
There’s not much in the way of polish here – a stylish opening sequence featuring Dujardin cruising the streets of Paris in a sports car is swiftly punctuated by said car breaking down at a red light – but plenty of downward spiraling. Dujardin and co-lead Gilles Lellouche play a series of different characters throughout the film’s various strands, but the one constant is their blithe and thoroughly guiltless pursuit of extramarital tail.
Hazanavicius’s The Good Conscience is one of the most successful segments, centring on Dujardin as a sad-sack corporate lackey trying to score during a business convention. It’s tough to imagine a farther cry from Valentin than this – or for that matter from Dujardin’s sub-Bond role in Hazanavicius’s OSS 117 films – and the long-time collaborators approach the excruciating Office-esque comedy with a canny lightness of touch.
Polisse writer and star Emmanuelle Bercot casts Dujardin alongside real-life wife Alexandra Lamy in The Question, a solemn portion that proves a welcome respite from the otherwise relentless tone of winking frivolity. It’s the only real attempt made to address the impact of adultery on a marriage, a theme that’s otherwise left pretty well untapped.
Dujardin – who co-produced the film and is also credited with its “original concept” – is, unlike his Artist counterpart, admirably unburdened by any sense of vanity. The bookending segments in which he and Lellouche play the same pair of vaguely sad serial adulterers end up encapsulating the film as a whole – they’re executed with wit and take one or two refreshingly unexpected turns (look out for the Vegas-set denouement in particular), but in the end shy away from the possibility of feeling like much more than trivialities. —Digitalspy.co.uk
