Family life is never as picture perfect as we’d like it to be.
For many of us that simply means things are a little quirky or dysfunctional instead of Hallmark-ready sigh worthy but for others, such as The Innocent (L’Innocent)‘s Abel (Louis Garrel who also directed and co-wrote the film), it’s a whole other order of magnitude familial-stress wise.
His mother Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), an extrovert Bohemian-esque free spirit, gave birth to him when, as she admits, she was far too young herself and he’s spent his life being both child and parent, a dual responsibility that has blurred the usually well-demarcated lines between parent and child.
He feels responsible for his mother, who has a record for ill-thought out decisions driven by the heart, most notably her propensity to wed ex-cons – there have been three in the last ten years including current husband, and her ex-in prison drama student Michel (Roschdy Zem) – and so when it seems that the new guy on the block may not be as straight and narrow as he’s making out to be, he sets out to rap Michel in a lie, hoping to save his mother, and by extension, from further heartache.
Aided by his best friend Clémence (Noémie Merlant), with whom he spends a great deal of time because (a) he likes her but (b) she reminds of his dead wife Maud – conversely while Clémence very much likes Abel, she struggles with the constant reminder that her best friend is gone.
There’s a lot of simmering URST there, and The Innocent is, in part, a very offbeat romantic comedy that only hits its stride, love-and-marriage-wise, late in the film, at least as far as Abel and Clémence are concerned, although given that the union of Michel and Sylvie is the chief driver of his farce-adjacent bundle of quirky family fun, you could argue it wear its rom-com heart on its narrative sleeve pretty much for its entire run.
But love and family is not all The Innocent is about; it’s also an hilarious heist caper of sorts, one that goes to being laugh-out-loud funny, especially when Abel takes it upon himself to stalk Michel who, it turns out, may be reluctantly back to his old criminal tricks.
Whether he is or not is merely hinted at during the film’s light and breezy first half or so which goes heavy on the frothy visual slapstick of Abel eagerly seek to unmask Michel as a law-abiding fraud, and is most concerned at that point with comedically exploiting Abel’s simmering trauma from life with Sylvie who, while loving and protective of her son, is also codependently wrapped up in her own emotional issues.
While The Innocent doesn’t completely stick the landing when it comes to the absurdity of Abel’s suspicion-laced quest to reveal who his new stepfather actually is, it’s amusing enough and populated by characters sufficiently likably broken that you are drawn into the farcically confected flow of a film that has a lot of slight but very funny things to say about the dysfunctionality of families in general, and the close but strangely twisted relationship between Sylvie and Abel.
It’s in the second half of the film that things get a little messy.
Abel somehow goes from maddeningly suspicious of Michel, a paranoia which is not without its merits to be fair, to being willing to do some very dicey things on his behalf – ostensibly it’s too protect his mother who has heart sunk her heart and soul into her new marriage and the florist she and Michel have opened which comes with a sting in the tail of their romantic and financial happy-ever-after – a transition which doesn’t quite fully work.
Much of the reason the second half of the film works as well as it does is because of the vibrancy and energy of Merlant who invests Clémence with a devil-may-care hilarity that makes you want to go wherever she is going.
She’s that much riotous fun, and she’s key to the narrative not stalling and being as much to watch as it is; while Abel starts to get cold feet about the things he has agreed to d for Michel, and by his extension his mother, Clémence is ALL IN, garrulously and enthusiastically willing to jump in feet first in the pursuit of a diversion from the banality of day-to-day life.
An absolute joy to watch, Clémence gives everyone a bouncier, more hilarious glow just by being in her vicinity while also adding a vivacity to the final act’s storyline, which should be all farcically over-the-top but which never quite reaches the height which Garrel, who based the film on the life choice’s of his own mother, is obviously shooting for (in one scene, quite literally).
It’s still a lot of fun, and the diversionary conversation that Abel and Clémence stage against the backdrop of the heist that anchors the back half of the film turns out to far more entertainingly honest and real than either we, or they, expect; even so, it doesn’t go into farce high gear which it could well have done without diminishing the inherent emotional payoff.
While it may not necessarily tick all the boxes you’re expecting, and ends up in places the movie’s beginning would indicate will never take place, The Innocent is an entertaining breezy examination of how family is never what we want or need to be and how we have a choice to either go with the dysfunctional flow or to fight against it, with Abel’s decision to somewhat understandably do the latter leading to all kind mayhemic ramifications later on.
The Innocent is fun to watch, possessed of both a vibrantly comic storyline and a lightweight emotional resonance that perhaps loses some of its impact by playing too hard with the silly over the serious, but it works overall thanks to nicely-wrought characters, well-judged performances and a willingness to go THERE, largely by Clémence who’s the MVP of the film, and to do so with great heart and thoughtfulness and a whimsical appreciation that families are quirky as hell and that maybe accepting that may, just may, save you from all kinds of trouble later on.