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‘Jim’s Story’ Review: An Impassive Protagonist Weighs Down the Larrieu Brothers’ Sentimental French Melodrama
'Jim's Story,' the latest feature from Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, plays as a sweeping father-son melodrama that distances itself with a passive protagonist.
The boy he’s raised as his own soon disappears from his life, only to return to him more than two decades later when secrets and grudges are unearthed for the older Jim (Andranic Manet) to make amends with the “first father” he once he knew. Aymeric’s impassivity very much sets the tone for “Jim’s Story.” He knows he often lets life happen to him: “I attract complicated stories and dodgy deals,” he tells Florence early on. And so, while “Jim’s Story” careens toward a sentimental denouement that plays with the tropes of maudlin melodramas (of family secrets revealed and fateful misunderstandings resolved), it cannot escape the sense of emotional detachment on which it rests.
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