André Téchiné taints an otherwise stellar filmmaking career with an abbreviated romantic drama where nothing holds together. Taking a novelistic approach to events and structure, the co-writer/director simultaneously overreaches and under-executes. Philippe Dijian’s novel presents the source material. In a story that hopscotches across time like an ill-shapen stone skipping across choppy waters, Andre Dussolier plays French author Francis. In Venice, Francis searches for an abode from which to write his next book. Real estate agent Judith (Carole Bouquet) captures Francis’s romantic attention in her locally famous web of seduction that pays equal tribute to both sexes. Jump to 18 months later. The couple is now married and living on Sant’Erasmo Island. Francis hasn’t written a word and seemingly has no intention of doing so. Drama builds when Francis’s adult daughter Alice (Melanie Thierry) goes missing after abandoning her wealthy husband and child in favor of a young local mobster. Francis in compelled to draw Judith’s former lesbian lover Anna Maria out of retirement from her private detective vocation to track down Alice. While he’s at it, Francis hires Anna Maria’s ex-convict son Jeremie (Mauro Conte) to follow Judith around from morning to night. It seems Francis is worried Judith is having an affair. “Unforgivable” feels like a month’s worth of soap opera episodes edited down to a two-hour movie. The characters hardly interact. Incidental episodes come out of nowhere—as when Jeremie throws a gay lurker into the canal after the man follows him down a dark ally. The film refuses to sustain a constant tone. You can’t really call it a melodrama or a thriller or a romantic anything. “Unforgivable” lives up to its title inasmuch as it presents an indefensible excuse for a movie.
Not Rated. 111 mins. (C-) (Two Stars – out of five/no halves)
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