At the Movies: Leaving
French director Catherine Corsini’s Leaving just didn’t do it for me. I was never tempted to leave myself but, in the end, the movie left me unsatisfied.
Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the well-to-do wife of a French doctor Samuel (Yvan Attal). Languidly bored with her comfortable life in Nimes and her role as mother to two teenagers, she is planning to return to work as a physiotherapist in a clinic being built in her garden. One of the builders is Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a Catalan with a shady past who is working for cash under the table.
Suzanne helps Ivan to empty household goods from a shed and falls deeply in lust with him. The two are thrown together by an unconvincing accident and a passionate affair ensues. The affair has a touch of Lady Chatterley about it but failed to truly draw me in because the two lovers never compelled me to believe in their passion and none of the characters is fleshed out to any extent. One of my companions felt that Suzanne was too skinny and Ivan was too fat, but the script must take most of the responsibility for the unconvincing nature of the film’s central relationship.
The wronged husband, Samuel, is well-connected and obdurate, so he does everything he can to stymie the lovers’ attempts to find happiness in their increasingly shabby surroundings. They eventually find the perfect place to turn into a long-term love nest but there is a sense of unreality about it all.
Corsini co-wrote the screenplay and, crucially, chose to begin the movie with a dramatic event, making the rest of the action a six-month-long flashback designed to explain how the characters arrive at a conclusion we know something - but not everything - about. This didn’t work for me, either, partly because I felt cheated by the withholding of crucial information and partly because I have an automatic and powerful distaste for the words “six months earlier” on screen.
So, what’s there to like about Leaving? Kristin Scott Thomas can act, of course, and at times she projects the mixture of terror, abandon and desire Suzanne must feel. In the scene where Suzanne first goes to Ivan’s place, Thomas conveys a strong sense of her rising excitement and fear in a very dramatic sequence without dialogue or even music. The film is prettily shot and has a pleasant soundtrack, but the best things about my night out at our wonderful Village Theatre on Saturday were the rest of the crowd and the Eskimo Pie.
Neil Wilson
Leaving (R16). The FINAL screening at The Village Theatre will be held on Wednesday 9 June at 7.30pm.
