★ 7 / 10
Women want to be with him, men want
R T
Women want to be with him, men want to be him character Camus nicely done in this end of life biopic. Gone are the days of The Outsider and The Fall to be…
Women want to be with him, men want to be him character Camus nicely done in this end of life biopic. Gone are the days of The Outsider and The Fall to be replaced with a world weariness borne of age, left wing bickering and the tragedy of Algeria and "Greater France". He's damaged and damages those closest to him, from the humiliation of his wife and mistresses to getting grumpy that his daughter gets a gold bracelet and his son doesn't like soccer (ok, that's fair enough). He's humanised through the relationship with his mother and the Sartre charaterisation as a little Penfold is quite fun but when he's in the car with mistress 4? 5? and he claims he's always faithful even he doesn't believe it. What did I do next, go read Camus of course - he's awesome and really good in goals.
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★ 5 / 10
In his case, it ended with a bang
dierregi
The movie has the contemporary, annoying, non-chronological structure, apart from the opening scene, with the child Albert on an Algerian beach meeting the…
The movie has the contemporary, annoying, non-chronological structure, apart from the opening scene, with the child Albert on an Algerian beach meeting the teacher who will change his life, but then it jumps almost to the end of his life, during the 1959 New Years holiday.
Camus and family are in their country home, his marriage with Francine is almost over and his friends arrive to visit in their luxury car, hoping Albert told Francine he's going to leave her. Obviously not. And there it goes, the usual bourgeois story of the married man and his lover(s), only in this case the man is a Nobel prize winner and a philosopher.
This makes you wonder what's the point of philosophising when - according to this storytelling - for Camus the meaning of life was to have sex with a pretty young stranger. Nothing wrong with that, but not much of a philosophical lesson, either. Trust the French to turn everything into an "histoire de c*l"...
Anyway, the movie jumps back and forward to Camus' problems because of his political stance (or lack thereof) about Algeria and with his unstable wife Francine, who tried to kill herself a couple of times, because of his long-lasting affair with an actress. In 1957, after having received the Nobel prize while going through an inspirational dry spell, Camus meets a very young Danish groupie, has a serious health crisis, gets depressed and then decides "What the hell! Might as well enjoy a Danish!" and jumps back to life, only to be lead to his demise in the luxury car.
Camus' life and death are well documented, so there is no spoiler here (even if I put "spoiler") as it is a well-know fact that he died in a car crash on his way back to Paris, while he had a train ticket in his pocket for the same journey. That's the only "absurd" part, because his life seems pretty much mundane, by French standards... middle-aged man falls for a young lover, after having played the field for decades. What's special about that?
Even if that was Camus life, I expected a different approach to the story. After all the man is an eminent author and philosopher... but maybe that's why we should never meet our idols, because in real life they're mediocre.
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80%
AUDIENCE
6.3/10
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