Dir.
Daniele Thomson. France, 106 mins
Cast: Cécile De France, Valérie
Lemercier, Albert Dupontel
Review by Samantha Hamilton
“Thank Heaven for litt-el gels” sang
the lecherous old M. Maurice Chevailier in Gigi, before such
open yearnings could get you five to ten years. Thank Heaven,
I say, that films are a visual medium and not therefore always
best represented by their synopsis. The blurb for Orchestra
Seats was by far the worse I have ever read. I therefore
feel compelled to share the opening lines with you:
“Catherine's a star on TV – hugely popular and
adored by everyone – but all she dreams about is serious
movies and intellectual recognition. By night, she records
her 100th episode and by day, rehearses a play at the Comédie
des Champs-Élysées theatre. She's overworked
but the show opens on the 17th, and you've got to be up to
playing in a Feydeau farce, even if you'd prefer to be doing
Sartre”
Oh Catherine, how familiar your life seems. As many brave
the cesspit that is London's District line, ready for a frivolous
day spent hunched over Excel, they too are frustrated by
a life of success and popularity at the expense of intellectual
expression. How, some might ask, are they to start directing
the rehearsals for a contemporary dance interpretation of
Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, when people are waiting
on budget projection spreadsheets and Gantt charts?
Throw into the synopsis a successful
pianist struggling against his notoriety, which is of course
suffocating his creative expression and ability to connect
with the masses, a millionaire art collector with a whiney
son AND (take a deep breath) reference to all the characters “meeting
to nurse their neuroses over a steak tartare” and Orchestra
Seats is. on paper, unbearable.
It is therefore absolutely, unresoundingly
difficult not to want to hate it. The synopsis would make
anyone hope for the opportunity to spew forth all the bile
lovingly cultivated during a Monday at work, with no time
to spend on the Proust. This reviewer was trembling with
excitement at the thought of launching an attack of nuclear
proportions, with the nuclear element replaced by a force
previously unknown to mankind, an immense and irrefutable
power sourced from the dense compression of all life's
failures and frustrations; then sitting back to watch that
steak tartare actually cook itself. A shame then that the
film does not create anger and actually leaves a faintly
warm and amiable feeling. Damn the gentle humour, Gallic
charm and most of all the clichéd, but still
romantic, Parisian landscape, the scoundrel.
Our protagonist in Orchestra Seats is Jessica. As the film
opens she lives in the provinces, filling her time with
visits to her elderly grandmother who entertains them both
with the incessant retelling of her life in the French
capital. Gran spent her life working as a five-star hotel
lavatory attendant, and her philosophy: “I didn't
have the means to live in luxury, so I decided to work
in it instead,” might reduce Marxists across the
world to tears, however it inspires Jessica to set forth
to the city.
And so Jessica finds herself a job
in a café so quintessentially
French you can almost see Sartre in the corner puffing on
a Gauloises. It's the café of choice for the glitterati
of the surrounding theatres and galleries and soon Jessica's
life collides with a myriad of colourful characters as they
lament over their conundrums, which range from artistic unfulfilment
to a failure to communicate meaningfully with one you love.
Thus comes much soul searching, tantrums
and consuming of the grape. What saves Orchestra Seats
from disappearing up its own well-formed derrire is the quality of performances
from the leads, the deft hand with which director Danile
Thompson moves between moments of light comedy and emotion
and the fact that it slavers on the French charm by the bucket
load
Jessica is played by CŽcile De France, a classic representation
of a certain type of French female lead, all big mouth and
gap teeth, beautiful in a kooky way with long limbs and clumsy
charm. Her honest charm and the warmth of the other characters
that could so easily be unsympathetic, ensures the film avoids
becoming the frustrating cliché of its synopsis. The
energy of the performances in the theatre, the beauty of
the music that flows from one of Jean Francois performances
and celebration of beauty and culture the art dealer's collection
represents is undeniably romantic, and the film needs this
to work.
Orchestra Seats is ultimately a fairytale world, Paris is
a quaint and friendly place where the beautiful homeless
can find warmth in an empty penthouse suite, a world where
one has room to explore the meaning of culture, beauty and
true love, and where some gentle philosophical meanderings
can wrap everything up in time for a nice glass of Bordeaux,
and just about manages to get away with it.
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