Life Of Riley (12A.)
Directed by Alain Resnais.
Starring Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain, Caroline Sihol, Hippolyte Girardot, Michael Vuillermoz and Andre Dussolier. In French with subtitles. 108 mins
Resnais' final film presents us with an alarming proposition – a Yorkshire where everybody speaks French. This is Resnais' third adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play (following Private Fears in Public Places, Smoking/ No Smoking.) They were always an odd pairing and this film seems to celebrate and exacerbate the incongruity. It is shot in a style of heightened theatricality. Scenes take place on theatre stages with painted backdrops. A combination of insets filmed on the Yorkshire locations and sketches of the four locations are used to indicate changes of scene.
The story is about three middle aged, middle class couples (of course, aren't all plays about three middle aged, middle class couples?) who, at the start, are shocked to discover that one of their friends, the unseen George Riley, has terminal cancer and has about 6 months to live. Luckily George has the kind of cancer that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman had in Bucket List; terminal but doesn't materially affect your lifestyle prior to that. To give his final months purpose they propose having George make up the fourth role in the am dram production that three of them are rehearsing. (The play is Ayckbourn's own Relatively Speaking.)
In an early scene, when a couple are going over some lines from the play they discuss timing and one says she is pausing for laughs. So, is this a comedy? Watching it I formulated that in all probability it was and I set myself the mental exercise of working out where, if one was watching the theatre production, the actors would pause for the sound of braying laughter from the stall. I think I spotted three – which means I'm getting a bit of an understanding for the theatre.
It's a strangely engaging film of an appallingly dull play. Resnais has stranded the material in a world that is neither cinema nor theatre. Watching the actors doing their stuff, rather well, on these cheap little sets is like watching animals in the zoo. They're doing their repertoire but detached from its proper context. If someone had deliberately set out to make a performance piece highlighting and ridiculing the limitation of theatre they couldn't have done a better job. Watching these creations floundering around on their little bits of imitation lawn, or sitting on their prop furniture is oddly poignant.
By casting French actors playing characters called Colin (or Coleen as it is pronounced here) Resnais creates a subtext about people living the wrong lives. For example Colin is, I think, meant to be a dullard, a slightly anal doctor who obsessed about synchronizing the clocks in his house. He is played by Girardot, an actor who started out as a handsome leading man in films like La Parfume D'Yvonne and though he now has the kind of male pattern balding that is well suited to an Ayckbourne character it can't cloak a charisma that is all wrong for the role. The film makes it into a play about miscasting.
It's also adrift in time. I'd assumed this was a play from the classic era when Ayckbourn bestrode the West End but it actual a very recent piece, 2010, from his Scarborough exile. It feels ancient but as a colleague said to me, when the curtain comes up in an Ayckbourn play, it is always 1973.
Private Fears in Public Places
Directed by Alain Resnais.
Starring Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain, Caroline Sihol, Hippolyte Girardot, Michael Vuillermoz and Andre Dussolier. In French with subtitles. 108 mins
Resnais' final film presents us with an alarming proposition – a Yorkshire where everybody speaks French. This is Resnais' third adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play (following Private Fears in Public Places, Smoking/ No Smoking.) They were always an odd pairing and this film seems to celebrate and exacerbate the incongruity. It is shot in a style of heightened theatricality. Scenes take place on theatre stages with painted backdrops. A combination of insets filmed on the Yorkshire locations and sketches of the four locations are used to indicate changes of scene.
The story is about three middle aged, middle class couples (of course, aren't all plays about three middle aged, middle class couples?) who, at the start, are shocked to discover that one of their friends, the unseen George Riley, has terminal cancer and has about 6 months to live. Luckily George has the kind of cancer that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman had in Bucket List; terminal but doesn't materially affect your lifestyle prior to that. To give his final months purpose they propose having George make up the fourth role in the am dram production that three of them are rehearsing. (The play is Ayckbourn's own Relatively Speaking.)
In an early scene, when a couple are going over some lines from the play they discuss timing and one says she is pausing for laughs. So, is this a comedy? Watching it I formulated that in all probability it was and I set myself the mental exercise of working out where, if one was watching the theatre production, the actors would pause for the sound of braying laughter from the stall. I think I spotted three – which means I'm getting a bit of an understanding for the theatre.
It's a strangely engaging film of an appallingly dull play. Resnais has stranded the material in a world that is neither cinema nor theatre. Watching the actors doing their stuff, rather well, on these cheap little sets is like watching animals in the zoo. They're doing their repertoire but detached from its proper context. If someone had deliberately set out to make a performance piece highlighting and ridiculing the limitation of theatre they couldn't have done a better job. Watching these creations floundering around on their little bits of imitation lawn, or sitting on their prop furniture is oddly poignant.
By casting French actors playing characters called Colin (or Coleen as it is pronounced here) Resnais creates a subtext about people living the wrong lives. For example Colin is, I think, meant to be a dullard, a slightly anal doctor who obsessed about synchronizing the clocks in his house. He is played by Girardot, an actor who started out as a handsome leading man in films like La Parfume D'Yvonne and though he now has the kind of male pattern balding that is well suited to an Ayckbourne character it can't cloak a charisma that is all wrong for the role. The film makes it into a play about miscasting.
It's also adrift in time. I'd assumed this was a play from the classic era when Ayckbourn bestrode the West End but it actual a very recent piece, 2010, from his Scarborough exile. It feels ancient but as a colleague said to me, when the curtain comes up in an Ayckbourn play, it is always 1973.
Private Fears in Public Places
