Six Days, Six Nights

(A LA FOLIE) ((FRENCH))

By DEREK ELLEY

Read other reviews about this film

Powered By

A Lumiere Pictures presentation of a New Light Films/France 3 Cinema production. (International sales: Lumiere Pictures, London.) Produced by Alexandre Arcady. Executive producer, Robert Benmussa. Directed by Diane Kurys. Screenplay, Kurys, Antoine Lacomblez.
 
Alice ... Anne Parillaud
Elsa ... Beatrice Dalle Franck ... Patrick Aurignac
Sanders ... Bernard Verley
Thomas ... Alain Chabat
Raymond ... Jean-Claude de Goros
Betty ... Marie Guillard
 

Potentially hot teaming of Gallic stars Anne Parillaud and Beatrice Dalle fails to ignite in "Six Days, Six Nights," a bland triangular drama that ambles along and finally self-destructs. Seventh feature of Diane Kurys, an often sensitive chronicler of female emotions, is a shadow of earlier works like "Entre Nous" and "Love After Love." Offshore arthouse sales loom cool.

Parillaud and Dalle play sisters, Alice and Elsa, who haven't seen each other for two years. One day, Elsa leaves her husband and two kids, and turns up on the Paris doorstep of Alice, a painter with a warm live-in relationship with Franck (newcomer Patrick Aurignac).

Franck doesn't take to Elsa, who starts by tossing her mom's ashes out the window and shows a startling lack of concern for the couple's privacy. When her unfaithful husband, Thomas (Alain Chabat, from comedy group Les Nuls), shows up for a reconciliation, Elsa loses it and almost smashes up the apartment.

Tensions reach a point where even Alice stops defending her sister and makes it clear she must leave. At the last minute, the couple let her stay on, and Elsa starts coming on to Franck, as well as wrecking Alice's studio to prevent her leaving for an exhibition in New York.

After convincing Franck that Alice is emotionally unstable, and bedding him to seal their alliance, Elsa has Alice tied up in her own apartment. A silly coda in Gotham (with Jerryka Soukwell warbling "Here We Go Again" on the soundtrack) finally torpedoes the movie.

For a film that starts out promising an emotional examination of sibling domination, the result is pretty thin stuff. Intimations that the two women may be lesbian ex-lovers rather than sisters (far more plausible given the chalk-and-cheese casting of Parillaud and Dalle) are left tantalizingly hanging, despite several scenes of more-than-sisterly affection.

Also left undeveloped is the midway hint that Alice rather than Elsa may be the more barking of the pair. As the man in the middle, Franck is simply a bouncing ball between the two women, with little to do but look sulky and handsome.

Though Kurys' direction is strangely slack, the main fault lies with the script, which has no clear idea where it's headed and fails to develop either emotional tension or a clear bead on its characters. Dialogue is generally lackluster, with even the mental bond between the two women more taken for granted than clearly spelled out.

Parillaud, looking sweetly sexy throughout, is low-key. Dalle, easily slipping into a white-trash role, pouts a lot. Aurignac looks confused by the whole affair.

Though Fabio Conversi's bright, glossy lensing is always a treat for the eyes , it's wrong for a pic supposedly concerned with destructive passions. Ditto Michael Nyman's music, which is unresponsive to the currents onscreen.

English title is virtually meaningless, given the movie's disregard of any fixed time span. The French original, "A La Folie," gets closer to describing things, though not in the sense that Kurys presumably intended.

Camera (color), Fabio Conversi; editor, Luc Barnier; music, Michael Nyman; production design, Tony Egry; costume design, Mic Cheminal; sound (Dolby), Pierre Befve, Claude Villand; paintings, Alain Kleinmann, Ofer Lellouch; works on glass, Bernard Moninot; associate producer, Philippe Lievre; assistant director, Marc Angelo; casting, Pierre Amzallag. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing), Sept. 10, 1994. Running time: 96 MIN.