Réparer les vivants (2016)
Directed by Katell Quillévéré

Film Review

For her third feature - after the excellent Un poison violent (2010) and somewhat less impressive Suzanne (2013) - director Katell Quillévéré takes on her greatest challenge yet by adapting Maylis de Kerangal's 2013 novel Réparer les vivants, a moving tale that received acclaim for its sensitive handling of the problematic issue of organ transfer.  Quillévéré's film has its inspired moments but it hardly does justice to Kerangal's remarkable novel and at times it struggles be more convincing than a second rate television medical drama, with writing and performances to match.  The director's honourable intentions of evoking something of the haunting poetry of the original novel go somewhat awry, resulting in a surfeit of off-putting cinematic bravura in the first half of her film and an ungainly mix of melodrama and documentary in the second half.

Réparer les vivants's biggest shortcoming is an inadequate script that serves up bite-size chunks of incident that, together, fail to cohere into a satisfying whole.  Torn between soppy melodrama and trenchant realism, the director appears to have opted for the former, with a cast of predominately big-name actors (Tahar Rahim, Emmanuelle Seigner, Kool Shen, Bouli Lanners, Dominique Blanc) squandered in thinly sketched, archetypal characters that barely have time to establish themselves.  Some showy grandiloquence on both the cinematographic and music fronts also help to dent the film's credibility and serve merely to give the impression that this is a film intended to beat an emotional response out of the spectator instead of gently engaging our feelings.  If there is any subtlety to this film, it is incredibly well hidden.

Things get off to a fairly promising start with the introduction of the character, Simon, who is destined to end up as a brain-dead organ donor.  Of course, knowing his fate, Quillévéré has to overstate what a tragedy his untimely death will be by (over)stressing how full his life is, with an adoring girlfriend and passion for riding the surf.  (Stunning though the surfing scenes are, they cannot help resembling an advertisement for a brand of aftershave lotion.)  Then, when the well-signposted disaster happens, practically no cliché is left unturned as the plot segues into that of a mediocre episode of your favourite TV hospital series.  Because we are not given the opportunity to get to know any of the protagonists it's no surprise that we can only engage with them at a very superficial level, but some disgraceful over-acting and some hideously over-done music help to drag out of us the appropriate emotional response, with as much refined subtlety as a circus clown extracting a back tooth from an elephant with a knackered pair of pliers.

Not sooner have we been dragged through one sentimental dung heap than we are well on our way towards another, as the attention now focuses on another character (about whom we learn next to nothing other than that she is 50, a mother and a musician) who is about to have a life-saving heart op, courtesy of the cruelly deceased surfer.  This is where the film really loses its direction and becomes a soulless muddle intended for art house junkies alone.  Clearly having failed to learn from the mistakes she made on her last film, Quillévéré gives up totally on trying to make her characters convincing and they become animated lumps of flesh, as devoid of personality as the extracted organ that is the only thing holding the rambling drama together.  Réparer les vivants is by no means a disaster but, with coherence and restraint in such obvious short supply, and seemingly drunk on its own vacuous artistrty, it fails to have even a modest fraction of the impact of Kerangal's extraordinary novel.

Film Synopsis

Simon, a man in his early twenties, likes nothing better than to go surfing with his mates.  On the way back home from one of their surfing trips on the north coast of France, Simon and his friends are involved in a car accident.  Transported to a hospital in Le Havre, Simon's life hangs in the balance, but it soon becomes apparent that he will never regain consciousness.  His parents are notified and are presented with an impossible decision - not only to consent to the termination of their son's life but also to the removal of his heart.  Meanwhile, in Paris, a 50-year-old musician and mother of two is awaiting a heart transplant operation that will save her life...