Another movie romanticising the relationship between an aged artist and a younger woman; the usual male-gaze reservations apply, and somehow it's more dubious that it's a refugee (Aida Folch) sheltered by a French sculptor (Jean Rochefort) during the Occupation. Shot in that classic-era Blancanieves monochrome, Fernando Trueba's film is initially ravishing to behold. Yet in the absence of much dramatic heft, its complacent beauty soon wears off; set it against Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse, a far more rigorous interrogation of this dynamic, and it's but a lightly shimmering afterthought.
height="315" width="476">Spanish director Fernando Trueba has an extraordinarily eclectic back catalogue, ranging from the twisted Peter Pan weirdness of The Mad Monkey (featuring Jeff Goldblum's most underrated performance) through the lush Oscar-winning charm of Belle Epoque, to the sensual jazz-inflected animation of Chico & Rita. His latest is a whimsical black-and-white meditation upon the nature of art, set in rural southern France during the second world war.
Here, sculptor Marc Cros (octogenarian Jean Rochefort, who came so close to playing Don Quixote for Terry Gilliam – a marriage made in heaven) takes in Spanish political refugee Mercè (Aida Folch) on the understanding that she will pose for him, reigniting his flagging artistic passion. With Jean-Claude Carrière sharing screenwriting credits, this holds few surprises in its revelatory conclusions about old men and young women, war and peace, art and reality, God and the devil. Still, Daniel Vilar's handsome monochrome photography is very easy on the eye, and Rochefort remains one of the few performers who can make the act of pouring olive oil on to bread seem significant, even metaphysical.