Five years ago, French writer-director Claude Lelouch returned for a second time to the site of his career’s greatest success with The Best Years of Life , an autumnal sequel to his 1966 romance A Man and a Woman that was elegiac in many ways—especially since it turned out to be the last screen appearance for its stars, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimé. But anyone who assumed that might be the end of Lelouch’s career was wrong. He has made three films since then, the latest, At Last , which, from its title, seems designed to be a kind of summation of the 86-year-old director’s career, but not in a particularly alarming way. It’s a strange, weightless work, darting between narratives, perspectives, periods, and grasps at reality, and treating even the most serious of human matters with an almost cartoonish verve.
His 51st feature, which premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by the presentation of a career achievement award to Lelouch, is an unapologetic work, reserved only for the director’s most devoted fans. (It’s scheduled for release in France on November 13, but it’ll be a hard sell anywhere else.) Loyalists may enjoy parsing the various inside jokes and interwoven references to Lelouch’s own work, as he once again delves into his vast catalogue for inspiration, this time settling on some profound pieces. The uninitiated will likely be swept up in the film, which oscillates between absurd comedy and cliched melodrama, with all that tone between absurd comedy and cliched melodrama. song These passages are an expected interlude from a project that describes itself in the film's introduction as “a musical tale brought to life by Claude Lelouch.” If you feel uncomfortable at that moment, consider this your signal to leave.
“Finally” picks up characters, plot threads, and even songs from 1972’s “Money, Money, Money” and 1973’s “Happy New Year”—both crime films starring Italian star Lino Ventura, and both excerpted here as flashbacks—though their relevance to the present may only be apparent to the director himself. The new film’s protagonist, middle-aged lawyer Lino Cassaro (comedian Kad Mered), shares a name with the career criminal in “Money, Money, Money.” Perhaps Lelouch is trying to offer some commentary on human duality, though the simplest explanation is that the former is the latter’s son, pushed toward the right side of the law by his father’s dubious adventures.
Leno Jr., a successful career man married to a much younger, famous actress, Lea (Elsa Zylberstein, in an unrewarding role), seems an unlikely candidate to drop everything and set off on a solo walking trip across France. This rash decision turns out to be the result of a mysterious brain condition linked to cinematic science that suddenly prevents the successful defense lawyer from lying—an ailment that has dire consequences for his career and his marriage.
There’s a more serious neurosis at work here, too, as we learn in the course of his intermittent, golden-lit journey, which sees him bond with several kindhearted people along the way—notably a neglected, piano-playing farmer’s wife (Françoise Gaillard), who eagerly responds to his lead suggestion that she watch “The Bridges of Madison County.” Another subplot, surprisingly inserted into the proceedings, revolves around another “Money-Money-Money” offspring: Leno’s half-sister Sandrine (Sandrine Bonnaire), the daughter of a sex-workers’ rights activist (played by Nicole Courcelle in the 1972 film), who continues to fight for her mother’s cause in the present.
It’s an odd development amidst all the film’s trappings, as are some random flashbacks to World War II—set particularly oddly against a thumping, cheerful jazz score by renowned trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf that could be the film’s main asset to non-director fans. What further complements the film’s musical design is Leno’s passion for playing the trumpet, which he acquired along the way. Unfortunately, this allows for a few replays of a melancholic romantic ballad between trumpet and piano, but it does at least give us a strange and memorable scene of our hero playing his instrument at Le Mans on race day, as the cars scream and whizz by below.
In what increasingly feels like an exercise in stream-of-consciousness, editor Stefan Mazalaj embraces explicit shifts and tonal deviations, though the film never quite seems to be in control of its incoherence. Maxine Herod’s digital lens alternates between a heavily filtered style and a somewhat harsh, straightforward aesthetic, but it never conveys Lelouch’s old-fashioned romanticism—not so much as the catchy, oft-repeated title song, performed poignantly by Meredith and Eurovision star Barbara Bravi (Lino’s daughter) in a long-fermenting emotional climax to this often-confusing, crowded film. “Life haunts us, it embraces us, it replaces us,” they sing, tremblingly: “Finally” does all three in any given scene.
