Feted French author and screenwriter Alice Zeniter makes her co-directing debut with Before the Collapse, a compelling tangle of personal and political stories set in contemporary Paris and Brittany. Best known internationally for her prize-winning 2017 novel The Art of Losing, Zeniter is working in tandem with her husband Benoît Volnais here. Together they wrap a fairly straight story of thirtysomething angst in sharp-eyed social critique and playful literary devices including chapter divides, wry voice-over commentary and occasion breaks in the fourth wall. World premiering in Rotterdam this week, this lively emotional rollercoaster ride is set for domestic release in April. The buzzy profile of its author and rising-star cast should generate healthy art-house interest in other territories too.
At heart, Before the Collapse is a fairly familiar Gallic melodrama about arty young Parisians in romantic, sexual and ethical turmoil. Viewer enjoyment levels will partly depend on how tiresome you find self-absorbed young-ish bohemians and their bed-hopping dilemmas. Zeniter does not excuse her characters for their occasional navel-gazing narcissism, but she treats them sympathetically, allowing for complexity and contradiction. Reflecting her own mixed heritage, she also depicts 21st century France as a more refreshingly colourful, socially diverse, multi-racial place than typically seen on screen.
Invested with wiry, dishevelled intensity by French-Canadian Cesar-winner Neils Schneider, Tristan is a 35-year-old campaign manager for a left-wing political candidate in a poor, multicultural district of Paris. He shares an apartment, and a commitment to progressive causes, with his long-time confidante and platonic female friend Fanny (Greek weird wave veteran Ariane Labed). In the thick of a sweltering heatwave, just as the election contest hits fever pitch, Tristan receives an anonymous letter containing a positive pregnancy test and nothing else. This cryptic message throws him into panic, not least because of the rare medical condition that killed his mother, which he may have inherited and could pass on to his own children.
Tristan’s odyssey become a gently farcical detective story as he tries to narrow down which of his recent sexual partners might have sent the letter, and why. Aided by Fanny, his frantic quest leads him back home to Brittany, where his old flame and occasional lover Pablo (Souheila Yacoub) still lives, and where his ailing father hovers on the brink of death. Leaving the city for the country throws up other unexpected tensions for Tristan too: with his estranged half-brother, with the staff of his father’s nursing home, with old friends whose small-town attitude he now casually disdains with haughty Parisian snobbery. Visually, these Brittany scenes are particularly alluring as cinematographer Jean-Louis Vialard finds a utopian sense of liberation in the region’s rugged coastline and verdant elysian fields.
Before The Collapse is rich in dramatic themes: sex and death, family conflict and mystery letters. But the most emotionally charged scene is actually a heated debate about class tourism, bourgeois privilege and revolutionary idealism. Being a French film, this naturally all takes place over red wine and delicious food in the kitchen of a farmhouse commune. Which may sound stereotypically Gallic almost to the point of self-parody, but there is scant trace of post-modern irony in Zeniter’s sparky verbal combat. Fanny is the main source of impassioned rage here, guilt-tripping the communards for adopting a drop-out philosophy she calls “collapsology”, relying on impending climate catastrophe as a get-out clause to avoid fighting capitalism. Which is all very stagey and verbose and preachy, but still invigorating to witness in a modern French film. Jean-Luc Godard may be gone but his hectoring spirit lives on.
After toying with audience expectations for 90 minutes, Zeniter casually reveals the secret of the pregnancy test letter. But by this point, her main plot hook has become a red herring, a side issue to Tristan’s belated coming of age as he finally grapples with unresolved family and personal issues. The film-makers indulge his sulky mood swings too much, often at the expense of the female characters in his orbit, who deserve more screen time and more dramatic depth. But overall, Before the Collapse has the engaging appeal of high-level soap opera, a novelistic depiction of flawed humans and their messy life choices.
Directors, screenwriters: Alice Zeniter, Benoît Volnais
Cast: Niels Schneider, Ariane Labed, Souheila Yacoub, Myriem Akheddiou, Séphora Pondi
Cinematography: Jean-Louis Vialard
Editing: Frédéric Baillehiache
Music: Sophie Trudeau
Producer: Marie Masmonteil
Production Company: Elzévir Films (France)
World sales: Pyramide International
Venue: International Film Fetsival Rotterdam (Big Screen Competition)
In French
96 minutes
