La Promesse de l’Aube (Promise at Dawn) , written in 1960 is Romain Gary’s autobiography. The story of the strong and influenced relationship between the author and his mother has become a classic in the French literature through the years.
Like any good book, directors tried to adapt it to the big screen like Jules Dassin in 1971 but was not described as a showpiece. This year, it’s Eric Barbier’s turn to give it a try, but he didn’t convince me. Indeed, seeing Pierre Niney and Charlotte Gainsbourg sharing the same screen was more than appealing and it persuaded me to watch it. But what a letdown!
I couldn’t get into the film and after a few thoughts I figured why. First, it felt like Barbier was trying to prove to his audience that he learnt how to make a film, he knows that different camera angles exist and that the use of filters can create emotions. But does he really need to show them all to us? Enough is enough ! We have during the first part a sepia filter telling us ‘this is when Romain was a child!’, but we understood that and we don’t need a filter to remind it to us. Adding up on that, the director created fake archives in which we see Niney being decorated by De Gaulle, how absurd is that? The list does not stop there, sometimes, we switch to black and white just to give a hint to the audience (once again) that we are back in the old days. The over-use of filters could be okay if it was just that, but Barbier makes us nauseous with all his camera switch. He uses a handheld camera, a few upside-down shots, a zooming camera, close-ups, blurred shots, a mise-en-abîme of our screen into their cinema’s screen… every possible camerawork is exhibited and it’s hard to follow in a 2 hours film.
The other flaw of the film is the mix of accents. We have characters speaking in French and Barbier felt the need to give them a Spanish, Polish, German intonation. We would have preferred to have a doctor speaking in Spanish with subtitles rather than listening to his weird tonality that perturbs the spectators and loses their attention. We don’t buy it, it’s too superficial and feels like the actors are trying really hard to be someone that they’re not. This leads us to Charlotte Gainsbourg. Her way of acting is quite academic, with her important gesture she plays as if she was on a theatre stage and does not fit on the screen. Moreover, even if her personal background (a Polish grandmother and possessive parents) could have linked her to her character, we do not believe in it. Gainsbourg learnt her grandmother’s language for the film, but even if she managed to squeeze a few sentences in Polish, her accent in French sounds fake and we hardly trust it. Moreover, Nina Kacew is represented as a toxic mother epitomised through her addiction to cigarettes; there is not one scene in which Gainsbourg is shot without tobacco in her hand. However, it’s still Charlotte Gainsbourg, and even if her rebellious image depicted in the film breaks with her usual character of the shy and intimidated character; we get back to it in a few emotional scenes such as the (many) separations with her son.
Thus, everything is not that dark and with bad taste in this film. Indeed, Pierre Niney’s fans will be fulfilled. His acting, as always, is really impressive and touches the audience. His voice soothes our mind with an emotional diction of Gary’s quote. The voice-over makes us want to read or re-read the novel to understand the truth of the son and mother’s relationship that is blurred in the film. Is it a tensed love? A challenging relationship? An oppressive relation? We thus need to go back to the book to find it out.
The last pitfall of the film would be the moment in which Romain is horse riding in the desert and finds an African woman on the edge of dying. The figure of the white saviour entering the ‘uncivilised’ patrie makes us cringe. Pierre Niney as a hero helping the world out of its misery had nothing to do in this film. This idea of unplaced moments is repetitive through the film with grotesque supporting role such as Didier Bourdon in Paul Poiret who makes a five-minute appearance and seems lost in his own role, being surprised to be there himself.
In short, La Promesse de l’Aube is a romanesque film as we expect it to be: nothing strikes us and without Gary’s story and the famous actors we wonder how it could have been that mediated and promoted this month in France. It is really unsubtle, didn’t have to be that long and makes us want to re-read the book to make sure that the story is not as fogyish as that.
