Valley of Love (2015)

Slo naslov: - 

Država: Francija, Belgija

Leto: 2015

Dolžina: 91',  Imdb

Žanri: Drama   

Slo recenzija: -

Režija: Guillaume Nicloux

Scenarij: Guillaume Nicloux

Igrajo: Isabelle Huppert, Gerard Depardieu, Dan Warner, Aurelia Thierree, Dionne Houle

[ENG]

Nominated for the 2015 Cannes Palme d’Or, Guillaume Nicloux's Valley of Love is a poetic and poignant exploration of love and loss set in the blistering heat and alien beauty of Death Valley. Two of French cinema’s most prolific performers, Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, reunite to play an estranged couple meeting for the first time in years. Their photographer son Michael has requested they visit a series of remote locations outlined in a note prior to his suicide six months earlier. Respecting their son’s wishes, they put their personal grievances to one side and proceed to confront the wounds of the past. With stunning César Award winning cinematography of the Californian desert, Valley of Love reignites the chemistry between Depardieu and Huppert, not seen on screen together since Maurice Pialat’s Loulou in 1980. These are tender and deeply felt performances rich with French cinematic history, as well as being some of the finest of both actors’ recent careers.

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If there’s a certain momentousness to the onscreen reunion of Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu — 35 years after Maurice Pialat’s “Loulou” — everything else in Guillaume Nicloux’s cryptic curio “Valley of Love” works strenuously against any mounting sense of consequence. A lean, spirituality-inflected grief drama set in Death Valley and complicated by self-reflexive musings on both actors’ star personae, this agreeable muddling of the metaphysical with the just plain meta arguably isn’t best flattered by a competition slot in Cannes. Still, there are gentle rewards to be gained from the initially brittle, gradually tender rapport between two actors of contrasting greatness, appropriately cast as estranged partners working toward a shared understanding of the distance between them. Their combined marquee value, coupled with the U.S. setting, should intrigue boutique distribs, though few commercial peaks await this “Valley” beyond French borders.

(Guy Lodge, Variety)

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