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The Light review
:. Director: Philippe Lioret
:. Starring: Sandrine Bonnaire, Grégori Derangère
:. Running Time: 1:44
:. Year: 2005
:. Country: France
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I've always been intrigued about life in a lighthouse, even wanting to flirt with that sense of isolation and infinity that must inhabit you, once you're alone, facing the elements. Set in Britanny, this drama doesn't really provide you with a lighthouse experience, rather it focuses on life on the land.
The film follows Antoine (Grégori Derangère—Bon Voyage) as he tries to get past his status as both a stranger and rookie to find acceptance in a close-minded coastal community. While he's become the object of desire to a lot of women in town, including the young village beauty (Emilie Dequenne—Rosetta), he finds love for a brief moment in the arms of Mabé (Sandrine Bonnaire—Intimate Strangers), the wife of his mentor (Philippe Torreton—Monsieur N).
The Light belongs to the sub-genre of "regional" French dramas, with its unwelcoming inhabitants, little secrets and remote locations. The film has a literary pace and atmosphere, slowly advancing, enveloped in a quality production with fine actors, but looking somewhat too restricted for the big screen, lacking a sense of dimension, and ultimately failing where films like Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources succeed.
Each character has been penned with restraint and subtlety, but the emphasis on melancholic tones rather than on drama undermines the impact of The Light as a picture, classified better to good TV movies rather than to cinema. There is nothing really new here, especially not the fact that these Bretons are pretty austere and rough which, in my native Provence, we attribute to the fact that they don't get enough sun! What we do however share with them is our apathy for "les parigots" (the Parisians) as you will notice in the opening scene.
There is also a mention of tortures perpetrated by the French army during the Independence War in Algeria but it doesn't really go anywhere: it neither justifies Antoine's decision to work in a lighthouse, nor does it have enough impact to act as a political statement—for that, watch The Battle of Algiers.
While the narrative is based on a true story, the lighthouse officiates here as a phallic symbol representing the sexual aura brought by the stranger in the town and the director, Philippe Lioret, surely didn't miss that point, as Antoine and Mabé's sexual encounter will culminate during fireworks from the lighthouse.
Antoine's story ends discreetly, off-screen, with a voice-over, stripped of any sense of dramatization, leaving you with the feeling of having looked at an old faded postcard.
Fred Thom
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