Life of Riley – Alain Resnais
I’ve recently been listening to DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey
Album. If you’ve not come across it (I hadn’t until recently) it’s a combo of
Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album, from which all the music is
taken. It’s a startling idea, and the result no less so, but predominantly
because it works so well, challenging all your expectations and, dare I say it,
prejudices. The problem with it, at least on the first couple of listens, is
that you spend so much time marvelling on how well it works and how clever it
is that you miss the music as music.
So the first exposure is a bit disorienting… Life of Riley is very similar, but
I’ll come back to this.
There are two basic questions that any review needs to
answer: 1. Is it any good? And 2. Will I enjoy it? Well the answer to the first
is “oh yes, it’s extremely good”. The answer to the second is a slightly more
reserved “well, yes, if you like this sort of thing.”
Resnais is not your ordinary filmmaker. As a warm-up to
doing this review I watched “Last Year at Marienbad”, a bizarre but beautiful
work of his from the early 60’s, concerning a couple who may, or may not, have
had a brief affair a year previous and the attempt by the man, when they (and
the husband) are thrown together at a social gathering, to get the woman to
accept that it happened, to acknowledge their love. Simple enough; but the
editing and jigsawing of the story (both in the supposed “now” and the disputed
“then”) give it a dream-like, disorientating atmosphere, which is accelerated
by the manner in which the film is shot (in beautiful, hypnotic, often static,
almost 3-dimensional black and white) and the nature of the performances, which
seem almost deliberately eccentric. This is an “art film” (whatever that means,
and if it means anything, Resnais is one of those few directors who deserve
that term) something you are never allowed to forget, but its “arty-ness” is
employed in a manner which adds a substance that is difficult to describe.
Perhaps it is simply that one is given time to absorb what one is seeing and
through that absorption to “feel” what is happening, which seems rare these
days. Unless you’re at the theatre.
“Life of Riley” is similar. Made 50 years after “Marienbad”,
Resnais’ film (his last before his death) still flies the “art film” banner
proudly, despite its deceptively simple plot, which, when first read, might
give the unwary the impression that you’ve seen its like before. You haven’t
and for that reason alone it’s worth watching.
Three middle-aged couples, living quietly in Yorkshire, who, upon hearing the devastating news of the
imminent death of a close friend, come up with an ingenious plan to cheer him
up; they will involve him in their amateur dramatics production. This kicks off
a series of events which gives them cause to look back over their lives, the
choices they have made and to contemplate what lies ahead.
So it’s a film about a bunch of people making theatre (or
trying to). The script is an adaptation of an Alan Aykbourn play, i.e. theatre
about theatre. Resnais film uses that as an excuse to employ theatrical
technique and the result is a film which is partly about film and theatre. The
locations are theatre sets and a great deal of the time it is shot as though
the action were taking place on a stage. And then suddenly it won’t be. Resnais
does things that are impossible on stage, just occasionally, to remind you that
you are watching a film. Cuts and transitions during scenes, and a particular
way of filming character monologues remind you that what you are watching is
artifice, like, of course, much of what is happening in these peoples’ lives.
Which is really what the film is about.
The problem with reviewing this film is that it quickly
starts to sound like a Mike Leigh film on crack, but that’s unfair to both
Leigh and Resnais (and probably to crack, but I’m not really qualified to
judge, we’d have to get one of George Osborne’s friends to offer an opinion).
Despite its locale it is a resoundingly French film and,
which I love about it more than anything, it abandons “realism” for “truth”.
Phew! Resnais rehearsed his actors theatre style and it shows; the acting has a
physical, almost clowning, style, which is rarely, if ever, seen on film or TV
these days, and is superb, which isn’t really surprising when you consider the
pedigree of the actors, and because the plot is so straightforward and the film
allows you time to notice, you have an opportunity (notwithstanding a caveat
I’m about to introduce) to revel in the complexity of these great performances.
The direction, which often feels more like choreography, is subtle and
magnificent. The film is a riot of colours, mostly provided from painted
backdrops which shift in colour as the story moves through the seasons, and
Mark Snow’s score manages to be both exactly what you expect and thoroughly
unexpected at the same time.
Which brings me to the first of the film’s challenges. The
first time I watched it I spent as much time enjoying, but also struggling
with, how clever it is as much as I did actually enjoying the film, just like
the Grey Album. I tried to stop doing this when I noticed I was doing it but it
was tricky, just because the film was so extraordinary. So I found I had to
watch it twice; but then I had to do that anyway because I hit a problem that I
suspect will affect all non-French speakers – the subtitles. It’s a film based
on a play, so there’s a lot of words. And it’s adapted from an Alan Aykbourn
play, so it’s worth reading the words because they are very funny. But all that
reading is very hard work, especially when you’re already marvelling at how
clever the whole is. So my immediate problem was that I knew I was going to
have to watch it again – which I also knew wasn’t going to be a problem, rather
like enjoying the ingredients of a magnificent cake, knowing that you’re going
to get to eat it again.
The only thing that did bug me about that was that it meant
I was going to have to contemplate the title again. The play on which the film
is based is called “The Life of Riley”, because the name of the friend is
George Riley, but the film’s French title is “Aimer, Boire et Chanter”, which
is then translated back into “Life of Riley” for the English language release.
I’m being overly pernickety, but that annoyed me, twice. It made me worry too
much about how close an adaptation this was of the play, which, on top of
everything else, I would rather not have been thinking about. But perhaps
that’s just me. In fact I’m being very pernickety, deliberately, because I’m
trying to find things to criticise about the film – all in the name of balance
and so forth – but that’s actually quite hard to do. Because having emerged
from the confusion of the Grey Album-esque experimentation, what you are
presented with is an innovative, warm expression of basic human feelings that
strikes you precisely as it is intended to. There is no “method acting”, thee
are no robots, no aliens, no superheroes, no Nazis, no room full of sex toys
(not that I necessarily have a problem with any of those things) just people,
the play they are putting on and their history as friends, presented in a way
that steals the best bits of theatre aesthetics and the best bits of film
technique and puts them together. And that’s enough; twice, and beyond.
I highly recommend that you watch this film. See it. Laugh,
cry and revel in how clever you are for enjoying it. You might find you need to
watch it again, but that’s no hardship. And he’s not making any more, so you
might as well take the opportunity of enjoying this one. Even if you don’t
normally like “this sort of thing”.
Watch it eating cake..!!
Cast: Sabine Azema, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Silhol, Michel Vuillermoz, Sandrine Kiberlain, Andre Dussollier
Dvd Screener courtesy of Eureka Entertainment Ltd
Matt Cummins
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