"L’autre" (2020) - Review
Charlotte Dauphin’s “L’autre” (or the other) is a delicate and deliberate portrayal of grief. In this sense memory portrayal through time, Dauphin constructs a ride through the seemingly never-ending internal emotional structures of personal tragedy.
Marie’s father (Jean-Louis Martinelli) dies suddenly in an accident. On the last day, he was alive; he had his portrait taken by a photographer, James Thierrée’s Paul. In the aftermath of his death, Marie (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) receives the posthumous gift of a photoshoot session, and they make a connection. We come to Marie (Anouk Grinberg) in middle age - trying to reconcile who she was then and who she is now.
“L’autre” shows that the greatest, and foundational, special effect that a filmmaker can have a handle on is editing. Dauphin and editor Sylvie Landra keep you in a state of instability as a viewer, slipping through time and states of consciousness. Cinematographer Jean-Marc Fabre has a field day in Paul’s studio, home and eventually Paul and Marie’s home. Multiple locations subtlety blur into a cavernous, multilevel space, furnished with memory fragments recovered in the shattered life that Marie needed to reconstruct in the wake of her father’s death.
The construction of “L’autre” is Dauphin subverting Marie’s journey through the stages of grief, both in the assembly of the narrative and the character. The five stages of grief - in summary - are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. Dauphin presents Marie in a maelstrom of emotions. We observe some of the ways that she corrupts these stages to latch onto this grief for the remainder of her life. Dauphin can navigate the knife’s edge of perception and intended confusion and maintains her grip on the audience. Marie’s inability to let go is an intoxicant of sorts.
Astrid Bergès-Frisbey must retreat inward as Marie. Bergès-Frisbey does a great job of showing the glimpses of potential life, one moving forward away from these events and then (almost reflexively) how she guiltily returns to the vacuum that her parents’ absence creates. James Thierrée is charming, warm and buoyant as Paul. You can tell that Thierrée uses the unfortunate circumstances of their association to convey regret and empathy. Anouk Grinberg’s older Marie is a vastly more serene and controlled portrayal. The benefit is watching both of these actors reconcile these distant poles, to maintain a singular arc.
What if you can’t let go? What if you can’t move on? How far would you retreat into yourself - affecting the world around you - to hold onto a sliver of what you once had? These are some of the questions that “L’autre” asks. You’ll have to watch it to see how it answers.
