FALSE CONFESSIONS – Review

Louis Garrel as Dorante and Isabelle Huppert as Araminte, in FALSE CONFESSIONS, director Luc Bondy’s French-language adaption of Marivaux’s play “Les Fausses Confidences.” Photo courtesy of Big World Pictures ©

Romantic comedy with a French accent and a love letter to theater both describe the French-language FALSE CONFESSIONS (Les Fausses Confidences), the last film by Swiss film, theater and opera director Luc Bondy. Bondy re-sets Marivaux’s 18th century classical play about love, “Les Fausses Confidences,” in modern-day Paris, and stars Oscar-nominee Isabelle Huppert (ELLE) and Louis Garrel as the would-be lovers at the center of all the twists and deceits.

Fans of director Bondy, writer Marivaux, the film’s star Isabelle Huppert or just theater in general, will find much to like in this enjoyable, clever film adaption. Passions, doubts, jealousies and tempers are all aroused in this dizzy, funny tale, in a production that blends film and theater in a creative fashion.

In the U.S., Moliere is better known but in France, playwright/novelist/essayist Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux is both famous and popular. The play “Les Fausses Confidences” is a favorite among the French, along with “The Triumph of Love” (a Broadway play and a 2001 American movie) and “Games of Love and Chance.” This is the third film version of “Les Fausses Confidences,” the others being in 1984 and 2010. Bondy’s FALSE CONFESSIONS opens July 14 in New York, July 21 in Los Angeles, and a national release is planned as well.

Bondy, a renowned Swiss director of films, theater and opera, directed both this film and a stage production of the play concurrently, at Paris’ famed Odeon theater. The same cast, which includes the incomparable Huppert, iconic actress Bulle Ogier and hot young French heart-throb Louis Garrel, performed Marivaux’s play on stage at night and shot the film in the theater at night. Unfortunately, Bondy died in November 2015 before the film was complete. It was finished in 2016 with the assistance of his widow Marie-Louise Bischofberger.

Marivaux, who also wrote the novel “The Life of Marianne,” is famous for his playful use of language. The title of Marivaux’s play can be translated as either “false confessions” or “false secrets,” and there are plenty of both in Marivaux’s twisty play about love and its inner and outer complications.

Isabelle Huppert plays kind-hearted, wealthy Araminte, who lives in a Paris mansion with her prickly mother, Madame Argante (Bulle Ogier), and her lady’s companion Marton (Manon Combes) and servants Dubois (Yves Jacques) and Arlequin (Fred Ulysse). Dorante (Louis Garrel), a handsome but poor young man of good family, comes to apply for a position as Araminte’s new secretary. But the young man’s real purpose is love – Dorante is secretly in love with Araminte, and his presence in her household is part of a scheme devised by Dubois, Dorante’s former servant, to win her heart and hand in marriage.

Dorante is also the nephew of Monsieur Remy (Bernard Verley), Madame Argante’s close friend, but Remy is unaware of Dubois’s plan to help Dorante woo Araminte. In fact, Argante and Remy are pressuring Araminte to marry Count Dorimont (Jean Pierre Malo), as a way to settle a lawsuit over a land dispute between them. The slightly shabby Count has a title but is neither young nor handsome, and Araminte is not too keen on the match. Araminte’s companion Marton is immediately smitten with Dorante, and Dubois encourages the young man to flirt with her as part of his romantic scheme. Araminte likes Dorante’s looks too and hires him, setting him up in the mansion and reassigning Arlequin as Dorante’s manservant, which sends the befuddled servant into a comic-relief tizzy.

The story opens with Isabelle Huppert in pure white practicing tai chi on balcony of her character’s luxurious Paris home, one of the many little visual delights of this polished film for Huppert fans, along with another scene where she run on a treadmill in a gold lame track suit. The acting is one of the major pleasures of this film, although like most films finished after a director’s passing, it is not a flawless work. Still, Huppert is charming and sexy as kind but cautious Araminte, while Louis Garrel is charmingly befuddled as the love-smitten Dorante.

Supporting roles carry a lot of the humor. Bulle Ogier is wonderful as the forceful, demanding Argante, determined to bend her daughter to her will. Ogier’s Argante is the kind of fire-spitting character that can melt lesser souls with a glance, and when Dorante faces her and his domineering uncle (wonderfully played by Verley) he is clearly outmatched. However, Huppert’s Araminte is no push-over to her mother’s wishes, long used to her tantrums. The major teller of false confessions is Dubois, slyly played by Yves Jacques, whose complex plan involves telling different things to everyone, and keeping everyone – including Dorante – in a state of romantic confusion. Her romantic longings bring out an aggression and cunning in Araminte’s companion Marton, while Arlequin exists mainly as a purely comic character.

The film is shot in the theater where Bondy staged the play with the same cast, but the story is not on stage but around the theater space, which works surprisingly well. While the play was performed by night at the Odeon Theatre of Europe, the same cast and director shot the film during the day. Some exteriors were shot at Luxembourg Gardens, and both settings give the film a delightful visual beauty. As the film unfolds, we get more scenes in the backstage areas of the theater, reminding us of the theatrical basis, revealed in a wonderful fashion.

All this is good for fans of Bondy or Marivaux, but the unsuspecting viewer who comes into this film without knowledge of either may find this film a bit strange. Although it is set in the present, one will immediately be aware this is an adaptation of an old play, and even a 18th century one at that, with its dialog about arranged marriages and convoluted plot spiked with servants and nobles. Modern audience are likely to wonder why they don’t just say what they feel, and save all that time.

Non-French speakers also miss out, as one of the signature appeals of Marivaux for his fans is in his use of language, with unexpected juxtapositions of words. All that “Marivaudage,” as it is called, is lost in translation into English subtitles. Bondy is clearly aware that not everything about this 18th comedy translates to the modern setting, so he plays with that by making the film both a production that straddles film and theater, and a showcase for both the fine cast and the theater where it was filmed.

If one is a fan of director Luc Bondy, author Marivaux, fans of French theater or even just Isabelle Huppert, FALSE CONFESSIONS is a worthwhile, even charming, film experience. Not everyone is a fan of 18th century theater and not everyone loves Marivaux, whose plays critics describe as style over substance, so this is not a film for everyone. It is just a little bit of theater-and-film crossover fun for Francophiles.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars