Lelouch : deserved bashing ?

Is there more shallowness in the critics’ brash dismissal of the director’s work than in the work itself ?

If they approached Lelouch’s films with as much deference as the movies of certain sacred cows, would they run to the conclusion that he belongs in the same herd ?

No, because a Lelouch film can make you physically sick.

His non-stop camera movements, their endless spinning and swirling feel like crossing the English Channel on a rough day and leave you dizzy at best.

The heaviness of his fare is also a challenge to your stomach. You go to a Lelouch film like to a wedding, dreading with good reason to eat too much and poorly.

At his most ambitious, Lelouch is also at his worst. His movies have an agenda, which they force feed at you.

The programme is often in the title : « Vivre pour vivre » (Life for life -1967), « La vie, l’amour , la mort » (Life, love, death - 1968), « Si c’était à refaire » (Starting over - 1976), « Partir, revenir » (To leave and return -1985)....

Throughout the film, it is endlessly repeated, generally by music and songs which play like a leitmotiv or a Greek choir gone berserk and transform the screen experience into a brainwash.

Many Lelouch films feel like apartments furnished and decorated by yard sale acquisitions. Their many parts do not fit together : they taste like the cocktail of a talent-less barman who believes that the more ingredients, the better the drink ; a bad case of too much of the wrong things.

Lelouch is never more dangerous than at the top of his success, when no economic constraints force him to compromise his vision. He is his own producer and, all counter-power gone, indulges all his directing whims.

The scenes of humour and the atmosphere of light derision which save his lesser works disappear and the director suddenly takes himself immensely seriously.

The more he immerses himself into soap, the more he sells it like high style classical drama, as if he were the Euripides of his day.

Rated on an « achievement/ambition » scale, « Les uns et les autres » (1981) is certainly Lelouch’s worst film. Moscow, Berlin, Paris, New York ; 1936, 1980, forty four years of world history, four families ; WW2, Unicef, Béjart, Ravel ; 135 minutes.

Lelouch throws all that is at hand into his indiscriminate « goulash » : quantity is supposed to make up for lack of quality and the few first-rate items are sacrificed to the mediocrity around them.

Ravel’s « Boléro » is exploited to elevator music effect and shall remain forever stained in the film audience memory. A celebrated stage actor, Francis Huster has seen his film career come to nothing : like Ravel’s « Boléro », he is associated to too many embarrassing Lelouch screen moments.

To enjoy a Lelouch film, sharing the director’s taste in women helps : his wives or life companions -Evelyne Bouix, Marie-Claude L...-, are often his stars ; unfortunately, Lelouch is no Vadim.

Dubious casting does not always have the excuse of romance.

Some acting stunts, though, are not fully of the director’s making. Patrick Dewaere was to play Marcel Cerdan in « Edith and Marcel » (1983), the tale of the boxer’s love story with singer Edith Piaf, but committed suicide as principal photography started. Lelouch, always attentive to the signs of fate, hired the boxer’s son, Marcel Jr., for the part. He was a lesser boxer than his father and a lesser actor than a boxer.

In « Hommes, femmes, mode d’emploi » (1996), Lelouch hired Bernard Tapie, former self-made-man, soccer tycoon, government minister, crook and prison inmate : a wonderful promotional tool ; the film did business.

Notwithstanding that occasional exception, Lelouch seems to be surfing from failure to failure. An inveterate gambler, he increases his bets as his losses deepen. An amateur painter unable to make justice to a bunch of flowers, he boldly embarks on remaking Chapelle Sixtine.

With bold camera strokes, he attempts always bigger frescos, as if the size and scope of his projects could hide that his finished films are only uncompleted sketches of what they purport to be.

In his eagerness to save his movies, Lelouch does not always help their cause. Each new release sets the stage for a tiresome ritual. The critics pan the movie, the audience stays home, Lelouch does the rounds of French TV talk shows.

Film after film, year after year, he does not change a word to his speech, riles the critics, not without reason -a Lelouch masterpiece would likely be hailed as just another bad film-, tells how his movie plays to packed theatres, the audience laughs, cries, applauds during the screening, rises at the end for a standing ovation ; with a sincerity which repeats itself from film to film, as predictable as the movies themselves, he swears never to have witnessed such enthusiasm.

His films shortcomings and his own put aside, Lelouch has built a real « oeuvre » of forty-something movies, which spans nearly five decades.

His sheer energy and persistence deserve respect. His ability to rebound from box office failure to box office disappointment is both a mystery and a sign of commercial, financial and marketing wizardry. Lelouch is a one-man industry : he produces, makes, sells his films. His power of conviction must be staggering, he is probably a better producer than director.

His body of work also amounts to a coherent collection of films, which tirelessly explore the intricate patterns of chance, fate, destiny. Or superstition : his production and distribution company is called « Les Films 13 ».

From beginning to end titles, Lelouch’s films try to go full circle and bite their tail : they rehash meetings which should have been and were not, but ultimately shall be, love stories meant to be but delayed ; they display a soap opera version of Hitchcock-style suspense : while his characters ignore it, we know that love, not danger, awaits them ; we sometimes root for them, sometimes only regret the waste of time, theirs and ours.

Lelouch’s annoying camera work is the visual transcription of his stories structure : his circular movements shape the loopholes of fate, his spirals surge and fall with his characters’ fortunes and come full circle for happy ends which are delayed beginnings.

Do such thematic unity and stylistic coherence make Lelouch an author ? Sure, but there are good and bad authors.

Lelouch probably belongs in the latter category, but if you want to give the man another chance, try "Claude Lelouch : mode d'emploi", by Yves Allion and Jean Ollé-Laprune.

Your read will reward the guts displayed by two respected « cinéphiles », who take the risk to assert their taste for Lelouch films publicly : a perilous coming out.