Summary
This French coming of age drama that chronicles the struggles of a gay man is not worth suffering through, even for the novelty of seeing Isabelle Huppert play herself.
It’s not uncommon that Isabelle Huppert is the best part of a film. Her decades-long career is full of bold, unique, and captivating performances that are hard to shake even weeks after one’s seen her movies. However, the fact that her glorified cameo as herself is the main highlight in REINVENTING MARVIN (Marvin ou la belle éducation) does not bode well.
In 2016, director and co-writer Anne Fontaine released The Innocents. It was a deeply profound film that tackled the themes of faith, the lingering effects of war, trauma, and surviving rape. It was insightful, sensitive, and spoke volumes in its quietest moments. Plus, the cinematography and performances were incredibly powerful. Given that film’s impactful nature, I was extremely excited to see her take on an LGBT coming of age story, but unfortunately left disappointed.
The French film, which recently screened at Outfest as the International Centerpiece, follows a young boy as he grows into a young man. He is bullied both by his classmates and his vulgar family for his suspected homosexuality. The film cuts between sequences of him at around age 13 or so to his early twenties, where he is studying acting and attempting to put on a play based on his upbringing. (This is where Isabelle Huppert comes in).
The film is a character piece more than anything, but unfortunately even after spending so much time with Marvin, as both a boy and man, I still didn’t feel like I knew him. What’s worse is I didn’t particularly care to. His entire personality boils down to his lingering family issues. Even his interest in drama is surface level. We never see how much it means to him or why. It lacks passion. His relationships with others – friends, lovers, mentors, and family – feel incomplete and lacking in depth, context, and meaning.
While the acting (particularly from Finnegan Oldfield as the older Martin) and cinematography are still are very impressive, the script and direction are weak. Even the editing becomes frustrating at times and the timeline of the film becomes unnecessarily muddled.
A bigger question at this point is what is to be gained by telling this kind of negative LGBT narrative? This journey sees a young gay adolescent get aggressively bullied and nearly raped at school, and witnessing as his dad further relates being gay to having a disease. As an adult, we naturally find him still haunted by these experiences. It’s upsetting, but it doesn’t come with a corresponding purpose, especially for an LGBT audience.
REINVENTING MARVIN reminds us how terrible and unaccepting people can be, although the target audience of the film is most likely already aware of this. Yet if nothing else, this film gives us one thing we can be thankful for: Isabelle Huppert, playing Isabelle Huppert, dancing to house music.
2017 | France | DIRECTOR: Anne Fontaine | WRITERS: Anne Fontaine | CAST: Finnegan Oldfield, Grégory Gadebois, Isabelle Huppert, Jules Porier | DISTRIBUTOR: Outfest Los Angeles | RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 17 July 2018 (Outfest LA)
