Review: "Ismael's Ghosts" just can't help digging it's own grave

              Often, usually during finals week, or when my advisor asks me for the hundredth time if I’m “sure I don’t want to change my major to something with more job security”, I think about leaving.  I think about just hopping on a Greyhound and riding it to the West Coast, up into the Rockies and starting it all over.  I wouldn’t tell anyone; I’d make a new name, or a new life.  I’d want to leave all that I have behind.  So in this way, I understand the motivation and the premise of Les fantômes d'Ismaël.  Unfortunately, even as an aspiring film director, the rest of Arnaud Desplechin’s potentially autobiographical exploration of his own psyche is too scrambled and absurd to be comprehended by most people in touch with reality.

              The basic synopsis of Ismael’s Ghosts seems simple.  Compelling, even.  Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric) is a film director struggling to complete his latest movie, when suddenly his wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) reappears after 21 years of absence when she boarded a train to nowhere with no note left behind.  Her reappearance reveals the double life that she’d led while abroad, and she begins to create tension between Ismael and his current lover Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg).

              Based on this synopsis, Ismael’s Ghosts sounds like a deeply rich thriller and family drama, built upon betrayal and desire, hitting all the staples of French romantic cinema.  However, what is not apparent, or necessarily relevant, to this summary, is the inclusion of Ismael’s own film.  The film within the film, so to speak.  This introduces the character of Ivan Dedalus (Louis Garrel), a daring international French spy that must outwit Russian intelligence in order to protect his country and wife.  Scenes of this film are interspersed throughout the primary narrative, and for some periodic moments, the excitement is heightened beyond the intense, tear-heavy drama.

              What doesn’t work about this premise, however, is that the two stories are ultimately disconnected.  Even when the primary narrative about Ismael provides the perfect cue for a cutaway to the second story, the scenes don’t line up.  There is nothing parallel about them.  It could be stated that, as Ismael’s insanity grows, so does the intensity of his film in violence and action, but that’s reaching for straws.

Instead of complimenting the primary narrative, the second film only serves to distract from it and confuses the overall film.  While both films are shot with precise detail and edited cleanly into each other, the images that they display make no sense in tandem.  Notice, again, how I refer to them as two films.  Essentially, that is what they are, and Desplechin might have benefited more from less.

I will say, though, that Ismael’s Ghosts still manages to hit strong points that make it a worthwhile film.  Technically, the film is sophisticated and makes many a reference to the French New Wave, as a good Cannes film should.  There is a sequence where Ismael is taking a train, akin to his lost wife, while a montage of his thoughts plays out in the train window.  Similarly, the climax of the film – a synthesis of the two films that, while still not comparable, is entertaining and hilarious – moves seamlessly between the two narratives in the confusion that it’s meant to convey.  Amalric manages to land almost every joke and awkward moment on the mark, while the framing itself only heightens the comedy, whether intentional or not.

Another thing that is missing from this film though, for me, is context.  The character of Ismael Vuillard has been previously played – by Mathieu Amalric – in a 2004 film by Desplechin.  In this incarnation, he was a musician, also found to be in the woes of love.  I have not seen this film, but I am also well aware of Desplechin’s apparent infatuation with Amalric, given his frequent collaboration.  Ismael’s Ghosts is relatively inaccessible, however, to those that are not familiar with this large portfolio of dysfunctional auteurism.  There are several moments that are inexplicable within the film itself, and it unsuccessfully attempts to reference other films in Despelchin’s repertoire, regardless of popularity.

The true star, and possibly the saving grace, of this film is the wonderful Marion Cotillard.  She delivers a performance that is as desperate as it is beautiful, and breaks the audience’s heart in doing so.  No matter how hard the narrative tries to blame Carlotta for being naïve, selfish, or a multitude of qualities that attempt to paint her as a melodramatic manic pixie dream girl, she comes across as sympathetic, born into the life that she felt she needed to leave.  As I stated before, her motivation is the one concrete reason for this film.  Through conversations with her character, we understand that need to escape, to start life over, and to fit several lives into one.  Even further, she reveals to us the consequences of this thinking, and how it hurts the relationships that she has.

The message of this film seems to be simple.  There are relationships in our lives that we do not choose.  What Ismael’s Ghosts emphasizes even more is the permanence of these relationships, and the repercussions that ripple into our own lives.  At the same time, this message is hidden under a litany of melodrama and misplaced action, dragging it down to be untangled.  It is without question that this is a movie that one must watch more than once to fully understand.  With the inclusion of a director’s cut that adds an extra twenty minutes of footage to the story, however, who will actually be able to watch it until the end?

Les fantômes d'Ismaël

Director Arnaud Desplechin

Writers Arnaud Desplechin, Léa Mysius, Julie Peyr

Stars Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Running Time 1h 54min

Genre Drama, Thriller