Film Reviews

The Father of my Children

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Chiara Caselli
• Details: France/Germany / 110mins / (12A).

This French drama is a tale of two halves: the first half consists of interesting story telling but in the killing off the main protagonist halfway through, writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve not only kills the most interesting character on show, she also kills her film.
Grégoire Canvel (de Lencquesaing) is an independent movie producer whose company on the skids - he's always accepted debt as part of the movie game but money woes are becoming too large to ignore. Investors, banks and the Tax Department want answers. His new film, currently being shot in Sweden, is running vastly over budget and there is still someway to go but Grégoire is adamant the director is a genius and is prepared to do what it takes to bring the film in with the director's vision intact. An admirable man, Grégoire won't sell the company's back catalogue because "then it would have been all for nothing." However, with financial pressures insurmountable, Grégoire snaps and puts a gun to his head.
At this point, bang on halfway, the air is let out of The Father of my Children, although the title begins to make sense. Hansen-Løve's film switches allegiance to wife Sylvia (Caselli) and follows the fallout and the effects his death has on them. The problem here is that up until this point the plot had little interest in his family of three girls under the age of sixteen. Mia Hansen-Løve bends over backwards to emotionally engage us as the eldest daughter Clémence (Alice de Lencquesaing) finding old love letters her father sent and secrets he harboured, secrets she didn't want to know and casts a different light on him. This should have happened earlier, or at least hinted at, because now Hansen-Løve has to start from scratch, build up characters in a plot that has nothing for them to do. Sylvia is reduced to talking to solicitors and sitting in on movie meetings she, and the audience, don't really have an interest in.
Although guilty of padding, Hansen-Løve doesn't pander to sentimentality with Grégoire's death and there are some beautifully handled scenes where the family visit the places he took them when he was alive. The film is never anything but convincing in its exploration of a family dealing with death but the director did herself no favours with that misstep.

Review by Gavin Burke