How I Killed My Father

Reviewed by Tom Daley

     "Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers." This dialogue is from this summer's blockbuster drama The Road to Perdition. Anne Fontaine's new film How I Killed My Father shows that this axiom is as painfully accurate in the opposite direction.

     The film opens with a patient describing to a physician the perils of being an older father. The patient has a two-year-old son. When his son turns 20, he will no longer respect or fear the father. This conversation is the basic tenet around the movie's plot. Does a son respect, honor or fear his elderly father?

     The physician is Jean-Luc (Charles Berling) who specializes in the field of gerontology. His practice is to slow the aging process. We quickly find out that Jean-Luc is a professional success. He has all the trappings expected of a wealthy doctor, namely a large home and an attractive wife, Isa (Natacha Rẻgnier). The movie quickly moves to a party at Jean-Luc's estate where he is being honored for his contribution to his town. An older man appears at the party and we soon discover that it is Jean-Luc's father. Maurice (Michel Boquet) abandoned his wife and two sons, Jean-Luc and Patrick (Stẻphane Guillon) to move to Africa to practice medicine. He is now forced to leave Africa due to political strife. Maurice's appearance at this party is the first time he has seen Jean-Luc since boyhood. After Jean-Luc's initial shock of seeing his father, he reluctantly invites Maurice to stay with him and his wife. After he takes residence in Jean-Luc's home, the story moves methodically to its conclusion. All that is left is the path to get to the titular outcome.

     Maurice's surprise appearance in the life of his son reveals that beneath the outward success of Jean-Luc there exists an emotional unavailability that affects his relationships with those closest to him. He is absent to his wife. Isa abruptly aborts their one onscreen romantic encounter when she questions Jean-Luc's sudden desire for sex. The couple has taken steps to avoid having a child, despite it being Isa's greatest hope. Jean-Luc has served as Isa's private physician and has given her false diagnosis of being medically ill-suited for motherhood. Jean-Luc seeks his physical pleasures outside his marriage through an affair with his professional assistant Myriem (Amira Casar). She is a single mother, the presumption being that Jean-Luc is the father. Jean-Luc has a strained relationship with his brother. Patrick is ostensibly employed as Jean-Luc's personal assistant. He is rough around the edges compared to his older brother. However, Patrick holds some qualities that Jean-Luc envies. His brother is a stand-up comic that performs monologues poignantly describing the lack of a father in his childhood. These bits are peppered throughout the film and are the only real source of humor throughout the story. Patrick is able to outwardly emotionalize the paternal absence that Jean-Luc has internalized. Jean-Luc does share the stage with Patrick during a birthday celebration and here is the most animated of any time throughout the film.

     The best performance of the movie comes from Bouquet as Maurice. His role is the most difficult of the movie. He shares the story with Jean-Luc, but he is the antagonist that drives the story to its conclusion. Maurice has the complex role of emotionally touching the people around Jean-Luc in a way that is passive yet effective. An absentee father garners no compassion and Maurice does not look for any. Yet he is able to enable those close to Jean-Luc towards self-realization. Maurice coaxes a friendly smile from Myriem during their first meeting. He forces Isa to question her medical treatment from her husband and the diagnosis that she is unable to bear children. Maurice's connection to those around him gets under Jean-Luc's skin to the point where Jean-Luc offers his father the money that Maurice requires to travel back to Africa. He declines the money and remains in France. It doesn't matter. Jean-Luc will not be able to make his father's emotional impact disappear by simply sending Maurice away. Boquet delivers this impact through subtle facial expressions and mannerisms that somehow charm those around him. Maurice is able to convey the feeling that he is something that Jean-Luc isn't, namely a physician that has a bedside manner in his medical bag, not just medication.

This film succeeds making its emotional statement graphically and musically. The tight close-ups that Fontaine uses more than compensate the lack of outward action and emotion. These shots leave no doubt that this is a story about Jean-Luc and Maurice. While every character gets this visual treatment, Jean-Luc and Maurice fill the frame just a bit more to leave no doubt. This technique allows viewer to feel as if they are inside the minds of each character, which is truly where the film plays out. Fontaine breaks from this structure once. Jean-Luc spies Maurice through a window talking to an African man that has come to entice Maurice back to Africa. Maurice and his old friend are sharing laughs reminiscing about the old times. By framing the shot from Jean-Luc's point of view through the window, we symbolically see Jean-Luc's jealousy of his father around having an emotional bond with the people in his life.

     The musical score is sparse yet present. The use of stringed instruments supports the feeling that Fontaine is trying to convey. The musical feel can turn on a dime from comforting to foreboding to frightful. Fontaine uses this to carry emotion across the end of one scene to the start of the next. Noticeably missing is any music during awaited physical killing of Maurice by Jean-Luc at the end of the movie. This is not your Hitchcock musical flourish during a murder scene. We realize that the father's death is not a conclusion for Jean-Luc, just a physical manifestation of the rite of passage of a son coming to terms with his father's impact on his emotional development.

     Fontaine bookends the story with two scenes that cast enough doubt to make you wonder how much if any of this action was a dream or a flashback. Any intense emotional relationship blends reality with imagination and this movie intentionally leaves that line blurry. Technically this film has the makings for some good conversation over an after-movie nightcap. Then you realize that not only did the characters fail to emotionally connect with each other, the cerebral telling of the story fails to connect with the viewer either. There really isn't anything novel about an emotionally distant father, is there?