La clef

From the outset, with this film interweaving plot and characters in two time periods, 32 years apart,The Key promised much but eventually delivered little.It is not an easy film to follow as new characters (usually unsavoury) appear out of nowhere. I will not even attempt to summarise the plot as this has been done elsewhere but I must agree it is a convoluted one, this not necessarily being a weakness. What irritated me throughout was the weak characterisation throughout, most annoyingly that of Eric. Honestly, from early on I did not care what fate awaited him. Why did he not want to take possession of his father's ashes? Why didn't he attempt to find out more about him? After being on the receiving end of skulduggery at the hands of the hooker Cecile and associated thugs, after being bundled into the boot of a car and confronted by unknown hoods, after being given the heave-ho by his wife, Eric never confided in anybody. Apart from half-hearted attempts to enquire of those who were treating him badly just exactly what was going on, Eric did nothing. Half-way through the movie, his character so exasperated me that like almost all characters in the movie, there was no empathy. So much so did Eric's character annoy me that his early demise would have been a blessing! Even though Eric's wife Audrey does tend to whine somewhat in the early scenes, I at least could sympathise with her. Overall, an unsatisfying two hours of cinema.

Jumping constantly between 2 time periods (1975 and 2007) and at least 3 different groups of characters, "The Key" is mainly an exercise in narrative complexity that does not satisfy very much emotionally. Admittedly there are some very suspenseful and well-done moments (the throat stabbing and the subsequent escape attempt), but in trying to interconnect all the different time periods and story lines, the screenwriters are forced to use a few too many coincidences, most notably at the end, when somehow almost every character ends up at the same hospital at the same time (also, I'm still not sure if the hero gets in so much trouble because he is mistaken for a thief by drug runners, or because of his father's criminal past, or both). The cast is good as usual for a French movie, but the lovely Marie Gillain unfortunately gets stuck with the poorly written character of the obnoxiously nagging wife. All in all, "Le Clef" is an interesting but forgettable experiment. **1/2 out of 4.

If you plan to watch this film, bring an ample bucket of patience along with your popcorn. Within 15 minutes, this flick descends into murky and contrived situations that will leave your head spinning. You are watching two parallel films (one in the present, one in flashbacks 32 years earlier), but you're also watching perhaps two or three OTHER sub-plotted films, with shady and brutal characters weaving in and out, some appearing or reappearing or just disappearing altogether.

The 'plot' for this flick is so contrived that, as a mere mortal, I'm at a loss to explain it. As an act of symbolism (what happens to children snatched from birth), it works, at least on one level.

Guillaume Cantet plays Eric, the son of a father he never knew (he was abandoned at birth). He receives an urn containing the ashes of his father from (what else?) a mysterious source who (what else?) REMAINS mysterious. We presume the urn really contained not ashes, but drugs, coveted by nasty druglords who come from somewhere (Marseilles? Paris? Who knows?) As with so much in this film, these shadowy druglords are enigmatic figures used as 'add-ons' when we already have too many 'add-ons'.

A barely recognizable Thierry Lhermitte plays a man who needs some kind of brain 'graft' if he wishes to survive. Such a 'graft' can only come from his daughter, who may, or may not be, Cecile (Vanessa Paradis), a cheap roadside hooker who manages to be kidnapped by the druglords, hidden in a cellar, and escapes through an odd, and, yes, confusing twist of events.

I kept rewinding this film, trying to really understand it. No such luck. The 'clef' (key) of the title re-emerges in the end, in yet another peculiar twist that isn't really explored. And that pretty well sums up this flick for me: a lot of tantalizing 'twists'.

The terrific Josie Balasko plays Michele, a dogged and philosophical detective in the 1970s who believes in 'parallel universes' -- intimate events affecting people connected in different places and time. The great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski explored this theme on numerous occasions, most successfully perhaps in 'The Double Life of Veronique'. This 'parallel' theme is really what this film is supposed to be about, it seems to me, but it just doesn't work.

Marie Gillain plays Eric's long-suffering wife Audrey. Unfortunately, she doesn't have much to do in this film.

This should have been a superlative thriller, but it couldn't find a cohesive thread to compound the suspense. It has a lot of style with jolt-a-minute editing and often irritating (and disruptive) hand-held camera work. In short: as so often happens in movies such as La Clef, style supersedes substance.