'Cafe de Flore' is a an unusual film. It's deceptively ambitious, but unfortunately its ambitions extend only to being ambitious as an end in itself, a movie whose complexity is unmatched by actually having anything to say. It begins as a montage of heartwarming scenes and images, telling us one story of success and happiness, another of pluck and courage, and whose overall message appears to be nothing more than that love is lovely for the beautiful people. But just when you might otherwise be starting to pull out the sick-bags, the film gets darker, although the treatment of the characters' lives remains somewhat superficial: while the aftermath of a break-up between two of the leading protagonists is at the centre of one of the plots, its details are (seemingly deliberately) denied us. What gives the film its structure, however, is the link between the two stories, which at first is also denied us, but is eventually revealed: one of the characters is dreaming (or remembering, from a past existence), the life of an another. The film never quite abandons its realistic underpinnings, but ends up in no-man's land: the link is insufficiently explicit to make this a ghost story, but as a mere suggestion, it's a remarkably flimsy basis to hold the story together. Director Jean-Marc Vallee successfully adds some tension as the brings the two stories to climax in partnership, as if they were really the same story; but from a little distance, it's very unclear what this concordance is supposed to imply or signify. A final clue hidden in the credits provides a 'Shining'-esque conclusion (but one equally unenlightening as the end of that movie)
Review of Café de Flore
