by Eugene Blazejowski Walsh
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Louis Garrel, Camille Cottin, Simon Boublil, Alexis Rosenstiehl, Pierre Lottin, Jeanne Lamartine
Intro:
It is the joie de vivre present not just in the characters and their story but in the style of the film itself.
There is a joie de vivre that runs through a certain strand of French cinema. Take Amélie, which sees the everyday as vivid and magical. It is in this same cinematic language that Just an Illusion (Juste une illusion) manifests itself.
This is the Paris of 1985, rendered in soft lighting and a warm colour palette. Seen through the lens of Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache – the director duo behind The Intouchables and A Difficult Year – the apartment interiors carry a glow that never tips into oversaturation, as though remembered rather than staged.
Everything has a homely feeling, complemented by period-appropriate furnishings, costumes, hair, and makeup. The decade of choice is clear, but restrained, with none of the neon-and-synth excess of ‘80s nostalgia.
A coming-of-age film, Just an Illusion is a snapshot of a middle-class Jewish family living in the outer suburbs of Paris. It captures Yves Dayan (Louis Garrel), his wife Sandrine (Camille Cottin), and their two sons. Vincent (Simon Boublil), the youngest, is nearing his bar mitzvah and entering adolescence. His older brother Arnaud (Alexis Rosenstiehl) is dismissive of him, and their parents fight too often to notice.
Boublil is the anchor for this story as lovestruck Vincent, who fluctuates with all the plausibility of an actual teenager, swinging between fighting, brooding on the meaning of life, or falling for classmate Anne-Karine (Jeanne Lamartine).
It is Garrel and Cottin, though, who command the audience’s attention as Yves and Sandrine, their performances jumping from realism to melodrama with ease as they manoeuvre Yves’ unemployment, their rocky marriage, and an unstable household with humour (Garrel is particularly funny) and a whole lot of yelling.
Rosenstiehl is charismatic as new-wave fanatic Arnaud, bedecked in an all-black wardrobe and a textured mullet. He is given less room to develop his character than his on-screen family but still leaves an impression, his image suggesting an identity that he built himself.
The film flaunts its artifice: slow-motion caricatures of a family argument, Vincent’s first kiss in the pouring rain. These remind us that this is just an illusion. Paradoxically, this is exactly what brings it to life and makes it feel more real than strict naturalism. It is the joie de vivre present not just in the characters and their story but in the style of the film itself.
The story gains gravity when coloured with the hardship that the Dayans are exposed to: social division, a recession and political unrest. Sandrine tells Vincent a bedtime story of his family’s Algerian and Moroccan roots, while reaffirming how they have always identified with their Frenchness.
That history is echoed in the protests on TV, where people line the streets against the treatment of immigrant communities in ‘80s Paris – Jews, Arabs, and Afro-French alike. However, these established hardships don’t carry through to the end, left underweight as shading for the background.
We are tethered to this world and our characters by way of the media that they consume. The film is peppered with VHS tapes, cassettes, CRT TVs and video rental stores, and it is through the TV that the outside world reaches the Dayans’ lounge room.
We are handed a mixtape of funk, rock, and dance music, featuring musicians like The Pointer Sisters, Joy Division, Imagination (who provide the song of the film’s title) and The Cure. These tracks are assigned to our characters, with funk to Vincent, rock to Arnaud, and dance pop to Yves and Sandrine, who share a heartwarming dance sequence to ‘I’m So Excited’. However, a few of the song-led transitions land abruptly.
Some of the dialogue is heavy-handed, at odds with a film otherwise so comfortable with heightening things. A particular exchange between Vincent and his mother about ill-fitting shoes (“What do we do?” “I’ll find another pair, don’t worry”) lands as stilted rather than stylised.
The film closes with Super 8-style footage of the family in their happier moments. The title, Just an Illusion, refers to the illusion of family stability as the hardships of the world pull at the ties that hold it together. The glow is the film’s charm and its limit: it keeps the home warm and the world outside it dim.
