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‘This Life of Mine’ Review: A Middle-Aged Woman Collapses and Rebuilds In Sophie Fillières’ Bittersweet Final Feature
Sophie Fillières died shortly after shooting her minor-key character comedy 'This Life of Mine,' starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman rebuilding her life.
Heavy on wordplay and loose conversational drift, Fillières’ brand of gently offbeat comedy — best represented by such films as 2005’s “Gentille” and 2014’s “If You Don’t, I Will,” both starring Emmanuelle Devos — has won her a dedicated following in France, making the posthumous premiere of “This Life of Mine” as this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener something of a domestic event. Too many scenes of her erratic behavior and befuddling interactions with others feel merely adjacent rather than cumulative: Minus the director’s first-hand input, editor François Quiqueré assembles what may be an appropriately diffuse patchwork of a life in disarray, but the structuring stresses and specificities that make a rich character study are missing. With Emmanuelle Collinot’s lensing consistent in its flat brightness, and no musical score save for some light banjo strumming by quirky actor-musician Philippe Katerine (here cast as a kind of fuzzy mascot for free-minded living), the film’s formal sparseness provides few stylistic cues for its peculiar tonal switches.
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