From the Land of the Moon – first look review

It’s not imme­di­ate­ly clear what attract­ed Mar­i­on Cotil­lard to Nicole Garcia’s adap­ta­tion of Mile­na Agus’ 2006 novel­la, relo­cat­ed from Sar­dinia to rur­al France. Cotil­lard plays unhap­py hero­ine, Gabrielle, who we meet soul­ful­ly wash­ing her vagi­na in a riv­er. She embar­rass­es her fam­i­ly with unabashed­ly lust­ful pur­suits of the vil­lage school teacher. It’s a pas­sion­ate set-up, which fiz­zles out in favour of scenes that sim­ply doc­u­ment Gabrielle adrift in the every­day. There are too many walk­ing and run­ning shots. Here she comes, walk­ing down a cor­ri­dor; there’s our girl, run­ning through fields. It’s like Gar­cia was so thrilled at secur­ing a star of such lumi­nous bril­liance that she refused to let her out of the camera’s viewfinder.

The plot kicks in when Gabrielle’s cold and judg­men­tal moth­er decides that famil­ial dam­age con­trol involves mar­ry­ing her daugh­ter off to a roam­ing labour­er. José is played by pierc­ing-eyed Spaniard Alex Bren­demühl (last seen as Josef Men­gele in The Ger­man Doc­tor). He treats Gabrielle with respect and the pair nego­ti­ate a love­less path for­ward. The plot kicks in with a hefti­er boot when Gabrielle (who suf­fers from the rarely-seen-in-cin­e­ma afflic­tion kid­ney stones) is sent to a Swiss spa for a cure. While doing some more walk­ing, she spies Louis Gar­rel as ail­ing lieu­tenant, André Sauvage, writhing about with an air of noble suf­fer­ing in his pri­vate chamber.

L’amour!

For the first time, Gabrielle expe­ri­ences rec­i­p­ro­cal affec­tion. Cotil­lard soft­ens and by doing so expos­es how tense her per­for­mance has pre­vi­ous­ly been. Her rea­son for choos­ing this part becomes clear. The ripe chal­lenge of occu­py­ing a woman who feeds on love – dry­ing up with­out it, blos­som­ing when it rains – is met with total com­mit­ment. Gabrielle is impul­sive, unin­hib­it­ed and hon­est. She has no job, no voca­tion, no dis­trac­tion from the push and pull of her yearn­ings. She needs to be held and the mus­cu­lar arms of death­ly-ill mil­i­tary man Andre Sauvagé are still fit for purpose.

While this all sounds like an over­wrought, swoon­ing romance, such qual­i­ties are tamped down by restrained per­for­mances by the three leads. Bren­demühl sim­mers as the steady, tak­en-for-grant­ed hus­band, who accepts his pow­er­less­ness with such grace that you’re con­stant­ly won­der­ing whether he’s due a melt­down. Gar­rel pos­sess­es the ide­al qual­i­ties to play a dying lover. The dra­mat­ic planes of his face can dis­tract when play­ing every­day cyn­ics, but here they add a deli­cious and amus­ing visu­al flourish.

Gar­cia is bet­ter at cre­at­ing gid­dy moments than the low-key ones that con­sti­tute the bulk of the film, which cranks along, bolt­ed togeth­er by awk­ward lines of dia­logue. Cotil­lard is a con­stant rea­son to keep watch­ing. Her embod­i­ment of Gabrielle is an intrigu­ing addi­tion to her com­plex women canon. This seems to be the mea­sure of the film.

Then there is a twist which cli­max­es with one honk­ing­ly ridicu­lous prop reveal. For a moment, it feels like Gar­cia has acci­den­tal­ly made a com­e­dy – such is the ham­my farce of this par­tic­u­lar cre­ative deci­sion. But no, this is a seri­ous dra­ma pack­ing seri­ous points about love, mar­riage, pas­sion and mad­ness. The actors do their best with the mate­r­i­al, allow­ing the film to sput­ter into the air for stretch­es, but it is over­all too cum­ber­some to prop­er­ly take flight.