Café de Flore Cinémoi reviews Café de Flore, a new trans-period drama starring Vanessa Paradis
Words by Jack Jones
A strange and often disorientating affair, Café de Flore is a split time drama with two, seemingly, separate stories on the obsession of love and lost loves. Ambitious in visual and storytelling scope, Café de Flore is something of an imperfect pleasure. Charming and heartbreaking in the blink of an eye, you’re never quite sure where this film is going. Perhaps being slightly lost and hypnotised by the frequently interchanging time periods, cleverly broken up by some excellent and jarring sound design, is the whole point. Elliptical and fragmented, Café de Flore feels like a collection of almost forgotten moments, fond memories and not so fond memories. Navigating your way round to a sense resolution something that proves to be elusive at times in this film - is part of the hypnotic or hallucinatory experience of Café de Flore. Finding something profound or of any personal meaning, however, is what really makes this film something to behold and cherish.
Café de Flore is in cinemas 11 May via Momentum Pictures
Pertaining of, at first, two separate but parallel running story arcs, one about a single mother and her disabled child in 1960s Paris, the other a successful Montreal based DJ whose recent separation from his long-time love and relationship with a new-found love is causing friction within his family, the one noticeable connection is obsession. One and every character in Café de Flore struggles to come to terms when they are separated from the person they love and the result can be violent both emotionally and physically. Some of Café de Flore’s most engaging and powerful moments come from the relationship between Jacqueline, a devoted single parent, and her son Laurent who was born with Down Syndrome. Fierce in her protection of Antoine, when Jacqueline observes her son’s growing relationship with a new girl at his school, her jealousy drives her to extreme lenghts. Vanessa Paradis is particularly impressive, striking a perfect balance between the charming routines that her character shares with her son and the explosive defiance she has when others judge her or tell her what her son needs. In contrast, successful DJ Antoine at first comes across as a self-centered and self-serving character who focuses on his troubles rather than all the comforts his life has brought him. For Antoine the struggle of encountering two soulmates has torn him emotionally in two. In flashback we see his growing relationship as a teenager with his future wife. It seems that though he is besoted with his new love Rose (Evelyne Brochu), he cannot get over the hearbreak of his ex, Carole (Helene Florent). Here director Jean-Marc Vallée makes an admirable attempt at pointing out that relationships hurt despite whatever comforts life may, or may not, have rewarded you. For the most part, Café de Flore avoids a Iñáritu-esque form of connective storytelling, favouring a more parallel running structure. That is until a rather leftfield and unexpected supernatural element is introduced near the conclusion. Though it may be somewhat out of character with the subtlelty and nuance of the rest of the film, the emotional weight of some of the broken relationships are more than enough to forgive this misjudgment. The other key character in Café de Flore is the soundtrack and striking sound editing that sucks you in and pushes you out of each narrative strand. The use of Matthew Herbert’s record ‘Café de Flore’ as link between the narratives is more a part of the supernatural element of the film, but the intermittent use of Pink Floyd’s ‘Breathe’ adds to the hallucinatory effect of the film’s fluid visuals.