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‘Finally’ Review: Claude Lelouch’s Bizarre Male-Crisis Comedy Feels Like a Farewell
Veteran director Claude Lelouch falls short in 'Finally,' a muddled, sentimental tale of a lawyer grappling with mortality and truth.
The uninitiated are likely to 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 your toes curl then and there, consider that your cue to leave. This unfortunately enables multiple reprises of a grievously whimsical ballad of the romance between a horn and a piano, but does at least give us a memorably odd scene of our hero riffing away on his instrument at Le Mans on race day, as cars screech and zoom below. Maxine Heraud’s digital lensing alternates between heavily filtered stylization and a somewhat harsh candid aesthetic, but never quite channels the romanticism of vintage Lelouch — not as much, at least, as the catchy, oft-repeated title song, most affectingly performed by Merad and Eurovision star Barbara Pravi (playing Lino’s daughter) at the long-brewing emotional climax of this cluttered, often baffling film.
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