A
former Miss Brittany, Bettie has always been able to turn men’s heads, but that
does not necessarily mean she has an aptitude for business. No seriously, it
doesn’t. With her bills and the disappointments of life compounding, she sets
out on an impulsive road trip in Emmanuelle Bercot’s On My Way (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.
For
years Bettie has settled for being the mistress of the man she thinks she
loves. However, when he leaves both her and his wife for a much younger woman,
Bettie loses her only reason for staying in her ever so provincial town. While
serving lunch at her soon to be insolvent restaurant, she suddenly ups and leaves
in search of cigarettes. She will range pretty far in search of smokes, but why
not?
After
a night drinking at a road house and an incredibly awkward tryst, Bettie
finally gets a justification for her walkabout. Her estranged, nearly
unemployable daughter needs her to drive Charly, the grandson she barely knows,
to his paternal grandfather’s house, so she can leave for a dubious job
abroad.
Of
course, it will not be a smooth ride, but at least OMW picks up speed as it goes along. As viewers learn Bettie’s
backstory, they will become more apt to forgive her dubious decisions, but she
remains a hard figure to fully embrace. That makes her psychologically
realistic, but also a bit of a pill to spend screen-time with. Likewise, Bercot’s
real life son Nemo Schiffman is certainly convincingly churlish as the
androgynous Charly. However, in his screen debut, painter Gerard Garouste
supplies exactly the sort of worldly gravitas the film needs as Alain, Charly’s
curmudgeonly grandpa.
