A sleepy, slow-paced documentary just that little bit too familar to anyone burdened with annoying relatives over Christmas, Michel Gondry’s documentary is no less tender and imaginative than his fictional efforts. The film takes Gondry’s aunt Suzette, a retired teacher, as its subject, following as she revisits the schools she taught in over twenty years ago. Particular in that particularly French manner, Suzette commands the screen from the outset, holding court at the dinner table and narrating long-winded, open-ended tales of past family gatherings. Moments of surrealism and clay-mation tableaux punctuate a slight, yet endearing portrait of a woman coming to terms with time’s passage and her son’s homosexuality. The son in question, Jean-Yves, gives a rival commentary on their difficult relationship; the warring two provide a strange kind of context to Gondry’s rebel spirit, but his subjects are so underwhelmingly genial that there’s very little conflict, and, by proxy, little plot; the director simply lets them ramble good-naturedly on until they reach the end of their dinner speeches.
Words: Roisin Kiberd
