THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
The concept film enters the field of French fiction with the sixth feature film by Gilles Bourdos, which invites us to a curious session behind closed doors, lasting an hour and a quarter in the cabin of a car in the company of a driver in extreme need. The formula is taken from a thriller from the other side of the English Channel. Locke (2013), by British screenwriter Steven Knight (also known for creating the series Peaky Blinders), of which The choice carries out the transposition to the Parisian setting, with Vincent Lindon at the wheel instead of Tom Hardy, and the tone of an intimate drama instead of a devastating suspense.
Joseph Cross (Lindon), a construction manager about to pour the largest slab of concrete in Europe, suddenly drops everything to run, from the distant suburbs, to a Parisian maternity ward, where a woman carrying her child is about to give birth. During the trip, which is also the one in the film, Joseph tries to resolve a triple emergency by telephone: managing the work remotely through a terrified assistant, confessing this long-hidden illegitimate paternity to his wife, and during this time to reassure the parturient in the middle of a panic attack. One phone call after another, Joseph spares neither saliva nor arguments, so that, that night, “the whole world” don’t fall on his head.
Prepared from a series of telephone conversations, The choice It is based mainly on verbal material, a text whose challenge is to suggest without showing. The problem, faced with this text that could well have been that of a play or a radio play, is that in the cinema there is not much left to film, beyond the alternation between the interior and exterior of the cabin. On the one hand, the driver hero under pressure whose downcast gaze points to a vanishing point on the horizon. On the other, the road that passes indifferently through the windshield, where stretches of desolate urbanity pass through. We will never escape from this small handful of angles.
inner voice
Minimal, the system rests entirely on the shoulders of Vincent Lindon, who here creates a kind of solo on stage, where even his playing partners (Emmanuelle Devos, Micha Lescot, Grégory Gadebois, Cédric Kahn) are relegated to the vocal range at other side of the hands-free kit. The actor gives free rein to his favorite register, that of “crisis management”, without skimping on the appropriate vocabulary – “Calm down”, “I would like us to talk to each other” – and the rants he has made his specialty. His performance alone has the great responsibility of giving life to these three offscreen who will remain outside the film throughout the film, so the actor shares the loneliness of his character.
You have 32.1% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
