Never Ever
Directed by: Benoît Jacquot.
Written by: Julia Roy based on the novel by Don DeLillo.
Starring: Mathieu Amalric (Jacques Rey), Julia Roy (Laura), Jeanne Balibar (Isabelle).
I have not read Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist – the short novel that was adapted by Julia Roy and director by Benoit Jacquot into the film Never Ever – but I can say seeing the film that there are some novels that just were not made to become movies. DeLillo’s book is said to contain a running internal monologue of the main character, which the movie completely forgoes – which doesn’t work at all in the film, because the main character is a complete blank in the movie. If we do not understand her, we cannot understand the rest of the movie – which is unfortunately what happens here, as Never Ever becomes a dull mess of a film.
The film opens with Jacques Rey (Mathieu Amalric) as a famed director, presenting his latest film in an art gallery. Having a few hours to kill until it ends and he has to do a Q&A, he wanders through the exhibits in the museum, before coming across Laura (Julia Roy) – a “Body Artist” doing her routine, which essentially seems to be moving her body slowly, drawing attention to different parts of her body. I, admittedly, know nothing about what being a “body artist” entails – and this film doesn’t really help clarify that much – because almost as soon as the routine is over, Jacques convinces Laura to run off with him on his motorcycle – abandoning the q&a and his longtime girlfriend/star. Isabelle (Jeanne Balibar) and whisking Laura off to his isolated, rented home. The two are quickly in love, and get married – even though there are already some strange noises in the house. Jacques abandons everything in his life – but after meeting with Isabelle one last time, he kills himself (or appears to) in a motorcycle “accident”. Most of the rest of the movie is spent with Laura in that isolated house – now with more noises – as Jacques either returns and haunts her, or as she slips into insanity, depending on how you choose to read things.
There are numerous problems with the movie that fatally hurt it – the biggest single one however is that there seems to be no real chemistry between Jacques and Laura while he is alive. Their relationship honestly plays like the kind of delusional fantasy older men often write stories about – where the older man falls in love with a young woman and is re-energized as a result. But even that reading would require there be some sort of deeper connection between Jacques and Laura that simply doesn’t exist – if he is draw to her youth and beauty, what precisely is it about him that draws her? Does Jacques have unfinished business with her, and that’s why he appears before her after he dies, or is she so in love with him that she cannot bear to not have him in her life, so she creates a delusional version of him for herself? If the movie knows the answer to this question, it isn’t saying – and it’s not in an ambiguous, open too many interpretations way – the main character played by Roy is such a blank slate for the entire movie, it’s impossible to get any read at all on her, or her feelings.
The film is pretty to look at. The house where most of the action takes place in one of the beautiful, older, rundown homes out in the French countryside, and Jacquot’s camera glides through it wonderfully. Yet, there’s a giant whole in the center of the film – and that is precisely who this lead character is, and why we’re spending so much time with her? What is she going through, and why are we watching it? The film never comes up with an answer to this question – so the movie just kind of sits there on screen, and we sit in the audience, bored.
Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2016 and wrote this review then. The film still hasn’t come out in North America since – and at this point, probably won’t, so rather than sit on the review, I thought I’d post it.
