AmateurMovieReviews.com

Rating: * * 1/2 (Out of 5)

L'idole is like a delicious looking dish, but once you get past the delicate presentation, it ultimately lacks flavors. The missing ingredient is the absence of any character depth. Director Samantha Lang's two main characters, and to a certain extent, the supporting characters, go about doing what they do without much motivation, at least not motivations that are detectable by the audience. Therefore their actions come across without much conviction.

A young Australian woman, Sarah Silver (played by Leelee Sobieski) moves into an apartment building and becomes the center of attention of all her neighbors. Monsieur Zao (played by James Hong), an old Chinese man, is especially affected by her presence. Zao is considering moving to a retirement home, until one day, Sarah, a stage actress, asks Zao to help her fix her lamp. The two neighbors, both foreigners and both lonely, develop an unlikely friendship which borders on a romance but never quite crosses that line. He cooks delicious Chinese food for her; he takes care of her, sometimes like a grandfather would to his granddaughter, but often more like a servant. She sees qualities of the old man that her lover lacks but knows better than to have an actual romantic relationship with him. Their subtle relationship is the center piece of the film, and here is where the film fails.

Zao is supposed to be enigmatic, but he is so much so that we have no idea who he is, what he is thinking about, or what he really wants. James Hong, a veteran Asian-American actor who has small parts in numerous films (most famously in a Seinfeld episode as the manager of a Chinese restaurant who would not let Jerry and the gang have their table), has a rare chance to shine in a lead role. However, the role is so underwritten that Hong's tacit interpretation only adds to the confusion of the character's motives. Leelee Sobieski shows off her impressive linguistic skills in the film. Her French is excellent, and her Australian accent is impeccable. Miss Sobieski obviously has talents, but she seems to have problems picking good roles, and she has yet again wasted her talent here. The relationship between Sarah and Zao just does not seem plausible enough to engage the viewers. There is this theme of "theatre of life", and we are supposed to believe that Sarah is the actress and Zao is the audience. But I am never sure.

Screenwriter Gerard Brach is a long time collaborator of Roman Polanski's. He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Marguerite Duras's autobiographical novel The Lover, which is about a young French girl's love affair with a much older Chinese man in Indo-China. Australian director Samantha Lang is also a gifted director whose previous works include The Monkey Mask, and The Well. She shows glimpses of visual brilliance here and there in L'idole, and I like to think that it is not just a gimmick that she did a French film with two English speaking actors. Another complaint is the choice of music. Gabriel Yared's jazzy score would seem more suitable for a Woody Allen comedy than this rather laconic film.

The little girl who plays Caroline in the film, Marie Loboda, is fast becoming the next Emmanuelle Beart. Even though the motivation of her character is just as unclear, if not more so, than the two leads, her performance shows such promise that she almost stole the film.

L'idole is ultimately unsatisfying simply because even though the premise of an older man/younger woman relationship is intriguing, the end product is half baked at best. Other films of the same premise, but are better made, that come to mind are, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation or Kieslowski's Rouge. Unlike L'idole, the characters in those films have the depth for the viewers to care about them even after the films have ended.


Starring: Leelee Sobieski, James Hong, Yves Montand, Robert Berri, Danielle Godet, Suzanne Dhelly, Yves Deniaud, Albert Prejean, Lilian Roycre, Remy Roubakha, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Jacques Sernas, Liliane Montevecchi., Marie Loboda

Director: Samantha Lang
Writing Credits: Gerard Brach; Samantha Lang; Michelle Tourneur
Produced by: Olivier Debosc; Marc Missionier
Original Music by: Gabriel Yared
Cinematography by: Benoit Delhomme
Film Editing by: Chantal Hymans

Running time: 113 minutes. Year of release: 2002. Language: French