The Refuge (Le Refuge)

Dir. Francois Ozon, France 2009, in French with subtitles, 90 mins

Cast : Isabelle Carré, Louis-Ronan Choisy, Pierre Louis-Calixte, Melvil Poupard

Review by Carlie Newman

There are two very unusual elements in this film: the first is that the director (Ozon) has used an actress who is actually pregnant to play the leading role of a pregnant woman. The second is the character's lack of interest in the growing baby and her apparent total lack of maternal instincts.

Mousse (Carré) and her boyfriend, Louis (Poupard) are both heroin addicts (the scene where they inject is raw and hard to watch) and it is only after he overdoses in Paris that she finds out that she is pregnant. Although Louis' mother (Claire Vernet) encourages Mousse to abort the baby, she decides to keep it and moves away from Paris to live alone in her ‘refuge' by the sea. It is there that Paul (Choisy), Louis' younger brother, visits her. He forms a close friendship with Mousse, which begins to crumble when Paul starts a homosexual relationship with Serge (Calixte) , who has been delivering groceries to Mousse . How Mousse reacts to this and her subsequent actions give us the story, but really this is a film about the characters, their emotions and their physical reactions to these events.

The main activity is, of course, Mousse's growing pregnancy and it is a remarkable achievement on the part of the director to have been able to film a pregnant woman, as she grows larger. We see many minor details such as her swelling breasts and the way that those around her deal with her body – most want to touch her belly - and in one scene, a woman on the beach bombards Mousse with advice and harasses her so much that she is forced to return home.

Carré gives a very believable performance, although she has stated that she is a very different person from the part she is playing here. Mousse does not care about herself as she feels that she is unlovable and the baby is just an extension of her dead lover. The actress has allowed Ozon to obtain very personal pictures of her body and is to be praised for a great performance. The singer, Louis-Ronan Choisy, in his first acting role, gives a truthful, tender portrayal of a young man who is coping with his own sexuality as well as dealing with the needs of his late brother's pregnant lover. While the musical score enhances the background to the story, the colour photography is muted and shows the gentle pace of life by the sea as opposed to the more frenetic Parisian lifestyle. The lives of Mousse and Paul develop and change so that we understand the decisions they make at the end of the film.