By William Wolf

VALLEY OF LOVE  Send This Review to a Friend

Watching stars Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert is enjoyable, even in “Valley of Love,” with its cockamamie metaphysical plot set in California. Directed by Guillaume Nicloux, the film was showcased in the recent Rendez-Vous with French Film Series.

The drama spotlights the stars portraying a divorced couple whose gay son has committed suicide. He has written letters, to be read after his death, giving them instructions to proceed along certain paths in Death Valley, where he is supposed to appear in some ghostly fashion. The plot is absurd.

Depardieu has morphed into a mountain of a man, but his face remains compellingly expressive. Huppert continues to be a formidable actress. We watch the characters they play bicker endlessly, with moves toward rekindling the past, but basically both held together and divided by the death of their son. Despite the acting skills, the film is thoroughly pretentious and hardly believable.

It scores only as an opportunity to spend time with French cinema icons Depardieu and Huppert. Reviewed March 25, 2016.

  

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