L'intouchable

I had my last two films on Friday. First up was L'intouchable, Benoit Jacquot's latest film, about identity and belonging as seen through the eyes of Jeanne, a young actress in Paris. It is shot in an energetic verite style, with much of the action expressed in a determinedly verasimilitude fashion. The plot concerns Jeanne's search for her father, whom we discover in the first few scenes was an Indian, living near the Ganges, with whom Jeanne's faded bohemian mom had a one-night stand.

The film is shot, loosely, half in Paris and half in Delhi. For me, and I'm pretty sure this was Jacquot's intention, it really came to life when we hit the streets of Delhi. There was a "Sun Also Rises"-like existenstialism to this; whereby the search for Jeanne's identity drove a more profound and meaningful experience. The filming in India felt intensely real; the arrival at the airport, the subseqent street and public transit scenes, and the Ganges itself (particularly the footage of the burial rituals) were fantastic.

The problem I found was that the plot, which relied on the motivation of Jeanne to understand her life better, didn't feel believable. I never really got why going to the Ganges to meet the man who unknowingly impregnated her mother would make everything fall into place for her. And ultimately, she comes to the same empty realization - the meeting of the father never really occurs, she has spent all of her energy on a confused search (mistaken identity - she meets his brother), and basically no longer needs to understand more. The film ends abruptly and anti-climatically, and while this is no doubt the message that Jacquot wanted to convey - like, life is complex and its journey can change us in different ways than we expect - it makes for an unsatisfying, and what feels like an under-written (certainly underfilmed, as it all resolves in about three minutes) conclusion.