A luminous Juliette Binoche can’t quite save Quelques Jours en Septembre
“There are many differences between the two sides of the Atlantic”
Sometimes the strength of a lead performance can pull a work of inferior quality through to the other side. Sometimes. With Quelques Jours en Septembre, entitled A Few Days in September for the English-language market, first time film-maker Argentinian Santiago Amigorena assembled a fantastic cast around him, including Juliette Binoche and Nick Nolte, but the conspiracy thriller he has written for them doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Set at the beginning of September in 2011, a former French secret agent Irène Montano is asked to bring the daughter of Elliot, an American colleague, to a meeting in Paris, but his secret adoptive son and a poetry-quoting assassin also turn up for the party as it becomes apparent that Elliot is in possession of some top secret information that could change the future of the world. The meeting is rescheduled for the 10th September in Venice and so Irène takes Elliot’s children to Italy and basically housesits them whilst trying to avoid being assassinated.
Binoche plays a little against type here but is most compellingly effective as former spy Irène, a fierce presence of clinical control when under pressure and a sharply amusing one when off-duty, her vibrant laugh is featured more than once in a couple of lovely moments. But she is near-crippled by a very weak script, testament to her skill that she is actually quite engaging, and Amigorena’s indecision about what kind of film he wants to make.
It starts as a would-be thriller but completely flubs the requisite tension-building that would make the opener suspenseful; it shifts to a lighter comedic style as the focus shifts onto the developing relationship between Elliot’s two children – Tom Riley and Sara Forestier both doing as best they can – though the drifts into rom-com are sorely misguided, pillow-fights, farm noises and playing with fish all falling flat; and the conspiracy element is completely underdeveloped, the 9/11 connection gets completely lost which at best is clumsy and at worst disrespectful, Nick Nolte’s late arrival as Elliot is far too little too late in this respect. Perhaps worst of all is the black comedy swerve that John Turturro’s assassin provides. An utterly preposterous figure, he’s not funny enough to justify this approach nor anywhere near menacing enough to provide a credible threat to our protagonists.
As if this weren’t enough, there’s also the indications that this wants to be an arthouse film too. It is filmed in a quite interesting way actually with lots of intense close-ups, which is brilliant for Binoche-watching though terminal for thriller sequences, and shifts in focus which blurs the picture to often intriguing effect. And so I couldn’t honestly recommend watching this film as a casual watcher, though it is alright enough for Binoche completists.
