Review: Café de Flore May 14, 2012

Like Beloved, Café de Flore has two distinct narratives existing at the same time but here it is one woman’s actual life and the parallel life that haunts her dreams.

Set in Canada, it stars Kevin Parent and Helene Florent as Antoine and Carole, first loves who stay together and produce two beautiful daughters before DJ Antoine falls for the much younger Rose (Evelyne Brochu). Rose moves in with Antoine and the two girls, as with so many modern families, share their time between their mum and dad’s houses. But whereas Antoine believes he has now found his true soul mate in Rose, Carole is destroyed by the loss of hers and begins to dream strange, unsettling dreams about a single mother, Jacqueline, (Vanessa Paradis) struggling to bring up her Down’s Syndrome son.

Family and friends are increasingly concerned as it becomes clear Carole believes the dreams are actually real and are trying to tell her something. It takes most of the film for the audience to understand what the message is and when it arrives it is not wholly convincing, but the movie is beautifully acted, not least by Paradis, who eschews her normally sultry appearance to portray Jacqueline as so exhausted by caring for her boy as to have no time to spare for her own appearance. However, it is Helene Florent as the heartbroken Carole who holds the emotional centre of the movie and she does it with a fragility that is often painful to watch.

There is great use of music within the film, especially extracts from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but the final resolution of all the character’s emotional attachments is a let down and feels like a bit of a cop out. Also, the weird way the characters talk in a strange mix of Quebecois liberally interspersed with English words means you really do have to keep your eyes on those subtitles in order to follow the action.

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