François Ozon is a filmmaker in an enviable position, straddling what’s often called “high” and “low” art. His early work in particular is marked by a campy tone and salacious subject matter. In Water Drops on Burning Rocks, he turned a minor Fassbinder play into a darkly comic psychosexual character study. Swimming Pool, also a psychodrama with erotic elements, flirts with becoming a full-fledged thriller. But more and more, Ozon’s edge seems to be dulling.
The most provocative elements in his latest, The New Girlfriend, feel rote, and like much of his recent work, it’s stifled, as if aimed squarely at the most arid of art house cinemas. One can easily imagine what a younger Ozon might have done with the material, but the Ozon of today just doesn’t push it far enough. Of course, some of this may be attributed to the source material, a short story by Ruth Rendell. The film begins with a eulogy delivered by Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) for her longtime best friend Laura (played as an adult in flashbacks by Isild Le Besco). A fleet montage sums up their relationship in the most generic terms, including such stock images as a childhood blood pact (does anybody do those in real life?). We do get a sense, via this admittedly well-constructed series of images, of Claire’s jealousy; Laura is the first to attract a boy, the first to get married and the first to get pregnant. But of course, she’s also the first to die, leaving her husband David (Romain Duris) and baby behind.
Claire’s husband Gilles (Raphaël Personnaz) is caring and affectionate, and he understands when Claire needs to take an extended leave from work to grieve. Fulfilling her promise to her dying friend, Claire goes to check on David and the baby, only to accidentally walk in on David dressed in his dead wife’s clothing and a wig. He explains that his late wife knew of his habit, which he’d mostly quit until Laura’s death. After the initial shock, Claire quickly gets used to seeing David as a woman, and agrees to keep his secret. The complicit pair grows closer, at first using David’s secret identity, Virginia, to block out Claire’s guilt over what feels increasingly like an affair. Things, as you can imagine, get more complicated.
And that’s part of the problem. You don’t need to have seen the film to imagine several ways the scenario could play out. Unfortunately, Ozon’s touch is too light and The New Girlfriend, full of major plot contrivances that come out of nowhere, never reaches the expected level of intensity. The compassion Ozon shows his characters is remarkable, especially with a story that could have been played only for laughs—and the way these characters deal with grief is fascinatingly unorthodox—but this isn’t quite sufficient when the film skates by on rote provocation, none of which is as shocking in 2015 as it may have been a few decades ago.
Consider the career trajectory of Pedro Almodóvar. He’s become a respected European art house director, garnering multiple Oscar wins, but neither his success nor his unmistakable transformation into a more refined filmmaker have muted his voice. Indeed, his two most recent films, I’m So Excited! and The Skin I Live In—terrible title translations, by the way—are among his most controversial. I’m not quite ready to declare that his French contemporary is on the decline; his last film, Young and Beautiful, was a quite effective use of narrative ellipsis. The New Girlfriend is a step backward for Ozon, but I’ll gladly shell out for his next picture.