Jean-Pierre
Léaud is probably the most recognizable French actor—maybe ever—thanks to his
performances in classic Truffaut and Goddard films, as well as The Last Tango in Paris, which people
keep watching assuming it will be something it isn’t. This time around, he
follows in John Malkovich’s footsteps playing a meta version of himself, who
plays a meta version of himself in an amateur film produced by a group of school
children on vacation. They do not recognize old “Jean,” but the creaky house he
is staying in certainly looks haunted to them, because it really is haunted by
his former lover in Nobuhiro Suwa’s The
Lion Sleeps Tonight (trailer
here), which screens during the 2018 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
Léaud
was supposed to be reuniting with a celebrated co-star, but her diva behavior
put the production on hold. Frankly, that is fine by him. He had been
struggling with an upcoming scene would have forced him to confront his
mortality. However, he will do exactly that, in a more oblique way when he
takes advantage of the hiatus to visit the mothballed home of a deceased lover,
Juliette de Garron. It is not clear whether it was an accident or suicide, but
either way, the net result was her premature death in the early 1970s. Yet Jean
finds that she has been waiting for him in that house, all that time.
In
a twist of fate, a group of local children had been drawn to the house as the
setting for their scrappy haunted house film. At first, Jean scares them away,
but he welcomes them in soon thereafter. They rather amuse him and their youth
is a healthy influence for someone regularly conversing with the dead.
If
Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper had
been reconceived as a children’s film halfway through production, it might have
a vibe similar to Lion Sleeps Tonight.
There really are not any scary moments in the film, but the scenes in which
Jean faces de Garron’s ghost have a breathlessness that is quite arresting.
Frankly,
Suwa struggles to marry up the evocative stillness of the haunted passages with
the spirited interactions with the Goonie-style children. It is a bit
frustrating, because they both have their merits. The one constant is a
world-weary but still rather game Léaud. He is definitely a good sport and he
has moments that would do his old mentor Truffaut proud. Many of those come
opposite the ethereal-looking and altogether extraordinary Pauline Etinene, as
the ghostly de Garron.