Film Reviews

I'm Going Home

• Rating:
• Director: Manoel de Oliveira.
• Starring: Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Antoine Chappey, Leonor Baldaque, Leonor Silveira, Ricardo Trepa, Jean-Michel Arnold.
• Details: Fra and Port / 90 mins / (No Cert).

Well crafted, acted and directed comedy about elderly actor, Gilbert Valence (Michel Piccoli), who is forced to re-assess his own life after his wife and children are killed in a tragic accident. Things take another twist when he is asked to look after his deceased daughter and son-in-law's young son. After this prologue, the time frame blurs and Gilbert is offered the role of Buck Mulligan in a screen version of Ulysses, which is being directed by Malkovich's John Crawford. Despite the fact that Gilbert is patently unsuitable for the role, he still ploughs on - with rather humourous results. Bittersweet and occasionally rather strange, this film from the 93-year-old de Oliviria is one of the most intriguing of the year. A genuinely involving treatise on youth, age and human relationships, I'm Going Home is liberally peppered with humourous anecdotes, but it's the director's sense of the absurd and the abject peculiarities of the human condition that has the most lasting impact.

Review by Garreth Murphy