# Portraits chinois (1996)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    PORTRAITS CHINOIS

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Phaedra Cinema
     Director: Martine Dugowson
     Writer:   Peter Chase, Martine Dugowson
     Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Romane Bohringer, Jean-
    Philippe Ecoffey, Marie Trintignant, Elsa Zylberstein, Yvan
    Attal

When I saw my first Woody Allen movie I was young and naive and wondered whether only Americans were that neurotic. My impression was that somehow the U.S. was the most stressed-out society and that Americans were the only ones who needed--and went to--psychotherapists. Since then, an exposure to foreign films convinced me that people in Burkina Faso and Vanuatu might be just as disturbed as those in the richer, more complex societies. Still, traditional psychotherapy as we know it works best in cultures that love to talk talk talk and whose people sometimes appear on screen to be more alive from the neck up than they are in less dispassionate parts of their bodies.

And since no one talks to the 35mm camera the way the French do, you'd expect our loquacious Gallic neighbors across the sea to discuss their relationships to death. That's exactly what they do in a film that resembles a Woody Allen comedy of insecure people and apprehensive relationships but seems to be made strictly for a French audience. Despite the usual stellar acting from the wonderful English actress Helena Bonham Carter (who does double-duty here by speaking French so fluently that I dare any Frenchman to make fun of it), I really couldn't give a fig or care a croissant how things turned out for them. Though the subtitles are clear, sharply etched, raised on the screen and brief enough to be read at a glance, what humor and irony probably abide in the endless conversations seem lost. This is, after all, not an Eric Rohmer film. "Portraits chinois" lacks the transcendent wit of Rohmer's "Autumn Tale," an amusing story of a middle-aged woman who finds love when she least expects it in a narrative that easily finds a home across the ocean.

Martine Dugowson, who directs and has co-written Peter Chase's screenplay, mines the Robert Altman field but her cast of characters play out their roundelay of relationships in an even more disjointed manner. Though by the conclusion we have a substantial idea of each person's makeup-- insecurities, hopes, triumphs and disappointments--Vincenzo Marano's camera does not focus long enough on any of these garrulous people (particularly not on Ms. Carter with whom he spends all too little time), to tell us that person's private tale of woes and felicities. Dugowson is best when she allows some characters to announce their thoughts to us in the style of Eugene O'Neill's interior monologues in "Strange Interlude." The thoughts are, of course, at variance with what the persons say, and had she used this device more frequently, "Portraits chinois" could have been a movie to be enthusiastic about. After all, Dugowson does want to point out the disparities between what people say and what they feel: the few scenes in which she employs the O'Neill technique work remarkably.

Filmed in Paris with a concluding, ironic scene shot apparently on a secluded isle in Italy, "Portraits chinois" focuses on a group of Parisians who test whether 'tis better to have lost and lost than never to have loved at all. Helena Bonham Carter performs in the role of Ada, an English fashion designer working in Paris for a noted fashion guru. She has just moved into an apartment with her live-in boyfriend, movie screenwriter Paul (Jean Philippe Ecoffey). Living together by habit rather than passion, they refrain from communicating their dissatisfaction with each other, though in one delightful moment Ada's thoughts do inform the movie audience of her anxieties. Guido (Sergio Castellito), who assists Paul in writing scripts, is insecure in another way: he is like the fifth wheel whom everyone else has to fix up with dates and he spends considerable time and money on his outfits as though his leather apparel could proclaim his manhood. An upcoming fashion designer, Lise (Romane Bohringer)--who repeatedly thinks "I love you, I love you"-- intervenes by throwing herself at Paul, who at first rebuffs her, while Alphonse (Miki Manojlovic), an aging but still handsome film director, has his hands busy with more than the scripts he assigns his assistant to read.

"Portrait chinois" is not only an altogether French-style comedy but one with the look of a woman's hand at the helm. Martine Dugowson, who used some of her actors five years ago in "Mina Tannenbaum," fails this time to elicit the same audience engagement of that story treating a friendship between two Jewish Parisian girls, and their disintegration when they fall in love with the same man. This time around, when Ada's bond with Paul falls apart only to become potentially revived, I couldn't help wondering whether Eugene O'Neill would have been interested in my thoughts: in two words, "Who cares?"

There is one priceless line delivered by Paul, the screenwriter, when one of his fans compliments him on the ideas in his movies yet receives in return a hostile reply: "You put two years into a film and everyone thinks he can put his two cents in...Do you do that with your doctor? No. You pay." That seems like as good a pretext as any to end this review now.

    Not Rated.  Running Time: 105 minutes.  (C) 1999
    Harvey Karten

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