The veteran director doesn't quite live up to his glory days in this confusing, sentimental tale of a lawyer grappling with mortality and the truth, but his fans will have a lot to say about it.
Jojo's makes no sense. And it's hilarious
Five years ago, French writer-director Claude Lelouch returned for a second time to the site of his greatest career success with “The Best Years of a Life,” an autumnal sequel to his trendsetting 1966 romance “A Man and a Woman” that felt elegiac in more ways than one — not least because it proved to be the final onscreen appearance for both stars, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée. Anyone who thought it might be Lelouch’s farewell film, however, was mistaken. He’s made three features since then, the latest of which, “Finally,” seems from its title to the 86-year-old filmmaker’s career as a kind of career summary, but not in a telling way. A strange, weightless confection that anthropologically bounces between stories, perspectives, time periods and different grasps on reality, even treating serious mortal matters with an almost cartoonish vivacity.
The 51st feature, which premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival to coincide with an awards ceremony recognizing Lelouch's career achievements, is an unashamedly egocentric work, reserved for the director's most devoted admirers. (A French release is scheduled for November 13, but it'll be a much tougher sell elsewhere.) Loyalists may find pleasure in dissecting various inside jokes and nested references to Lelouch's own oeuvre, as he once again dips into his considerable catalog for inspiration, this time with some deeper cuts. The uninitiated will likely be left completely adrift by the film's tonal ricochets between cornball comedy and moist-eyed melodrama, with all the chanson interludes you'd expect from a project that bills itself in the opening credits as "a musical fable brought to life by Claude Lelouch." If you find yourself cringing at any point, consider it a sign to walk away.
“Finally” nominally picks up characters, plot lines and even song fragments from 1972’s “Money Money Money” and 1973’s “Happy New Year” — both crime films starring Italian star Lino Ventura, both presented here in flashbacks — though their present-day significance can only be apparent to the director himself. The new film’s protagonist, middle-aged lawyer Lino Cassaro (comedian Kad Merad), shares a name with the career criminal at the center of “Money Money Money.” Perhaps Lelouch is sampling himself to offer some commentary on human duality, though the simpler explanation is that the former is the son of the latter, motivated to take the right side of the law by his father’s dark adventures.
