Review: The Innocent

The Innocent is an award-winning French comedy drama, starring, written and directed by Louis Garrel. Co-starring Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a lady on fire) and Roschdy Zem (Chocolat).One thing the recent French Film Festival has proved is that there's another successful business plan for the movies apart from the one dominating Hollywood at the moment.Films like The Innocent hark back to an earlier time, when films came from a few bright ideas and original characters, and didn't depend on endless remakes, and franchises based on elderly blueprints.It also helps if it's the work of a hot, new auteur - in this case star, writer and director Louis Garrel. He plays Abel, whose mother Sylvie teaches theatre at the local prison.Abel's disgusted when Sylvie falls for her leading man, an ex-burglar called Michel and marries him just before his release. Abel ropes in the lovely Clemence to help spy on the shifty Michel.Should I mention that Abel is a scientist who works at the city aquarium, that he and Clemence are just good friends, though Clemence thinks he needs to get over the death of his wife and have some fun? Or that Abel's mother is quitting the theatre game to go into business with Michel, though who knows how Michel's paid for their new shop?Because, like so many films in this year's French Festival, the intricate construction of the plot is much of its appeal. Like an old-fashioned Swiss watch, there are so many independent wheels and levers pushing the story to a satisfying conclusion.The conservative, risk-averse Abel may be at the centre of the increasingly complicated story, but writer director Garrel surrounds him with more colourful characters.Passionate theatre star Sylvie, cool ex-crim Michel trying to go straight, and gorgeous loose cannon Clemence - the last person you want to have on board in a tricky caviar robbery.Despite The Innocent's apparent French farce origins, it owes just as much to that country's classic New Wave heist movies of the Fifties and Sixties.Garrel even looks a bit like Jean-Paul Belmondo in a certain light.And like a French New Wave film, The Innocent borrows freely from the auteur's real life. Garrel's mother not only taught theatre in prisons but she also married one of the inmates. While it's safe to say that what happened next came entirely from Garrel's imagination, it explains the unique flavour of the film - not quite comedy, not quite crime drama, not quite romance…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details