At the age of 33, life ambles along for Arman (Vincent Macaigne, Age of Panic), his age is far from indicative of having everything – or anything – together. Years at art school have left him without a clear-cut career path, but he strives for more than the label that comes with a profession. In the usual quest for meaning, he seeks purpose. In the standard desire for connection, he searches for romance.
Sparked by his birthday, the Parisian resident takes to jogging when he’s not watching films with his best friend Benjamin (Bastien Bouillon, Hand in Hand), and on his first run he meets Amélie (Maud Wyler, Blue is the Warmest Colour). As the years pass and the seasons change – the 2 Autumns, 3 Winters (2 automnes 3 hivers) of the film’s title – the trio drift in and out of life and love, as littered with minor and major medical emergencies.
Writer/director Sébastien Betbeder apes the meandering of his protagonist in his second full-length feature after 2007’s Nuage, his film content to flit through the episodic slices of their thirty-something existence. Indeed, the filmmaker actively embraces his wandering structure by enforcing a playful approach that both constrains and exposes his characters. Numbered chapters of varying lengths define the film, their titles ranging from obvious to amusing. Clips from other movies, the lauded and the popular, are included for dramatic emphasis. Narration self-consciously conveys inner thoughts, as overlaid over montages and stated direct to camera.
The blatant breaking of the fourth wall may ooze quirkiness, but offers the feature greater emotional range than is otherwise evident in the familiar story of belated quarter-life malaise. Earnest expressions of worries and fears – about getting older, feeling restless, and stewing in uncertainty – are all the more affecting for the confessional-like way they are presented. Descriptions of harrowing events, such as Benjamin’s stroke (mirroring the real-life circumstances of lead actor Macaigne), are heightened in their power by telling rather than showing. Rather than diffusing focus, switching between the viewpoints of the three central characters helps bring the vignettes together.
Betbeder continues the arty, offbeat, almost whimsical amalgam by mixing materials between slick digital shooting and graining 16mm film, and confining everything within Academy-ratio frames. With an affection for cinema evident, his entire aesthetic construction has one obvious goal in mind: mirroring the spirit of the French New Wave that is an ever-present influence upon the feature. 2 Autumns, 3 Winters is as much a reimagining of customary rom-com tropes as it is a homage to its predecessors.
In star-in-the-making Macaigne, the film also boasts an endearing lead capable of eliciting warmth, carrying the conversation-heavy drama, and conveying the requisite personality so crucial to the feature’s success. His charms adapt to the varying tones and segments, perfecting the humour and honesty of a bittersweet effort that shows plenty of style but remains narratively slight.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
2 Autumns, 3 Winters (2 automnes 3 hivers)
Director: Sébastien Betbeder
France, 2013, 91 mins
Rated: M
Distributor: ACMI
www.acmi.net.au
18 April – 9 May
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