Alice & Martin

Téchiné, sadly, has never worked for me. He’s made so many films, and has a high enough reputation, that I’m almost convinced these sins (against my viewing pleasure) are intentional: a) characters whose actions make no sense whatsoever — in fact, whose actions directly contradict what sense one has been able to make of them, and not in psycholgically revealing ways; b) time jumps ahead several weeks or months without warning, clues or reason; again, this doesn’t seem to be toward any purpose like narrative deconstruction; he just suddenly drops a thread and picks it up again, one supposes, at the next point at which it interests him. The way I’m putting it, it almost sounds like he’s making interesting formal choices, but truly, of the three lackluster films I have seen from him so far this is the least crafted and compelling by far.