Wild Grass

2009/France & Italy/104mins/ Dir. Alain Resnais

Cast: André Dussollier, Sabine Azéma, Emmanuelle Devos

Wild Grass, based on the novel L’Incident by Christian Gailly and titled after those stubborn weeds that erupt from cracks in the pavement, is an ode to uncontrolled impulse and the possibilities—effervescent or ominous, sublime or absurd—that arise from accident.

The triggering incident is fairly ordinary: A woman goes out shopping for shoes and has her purse snatched; a man goes out to buy a watch battery and stumbles upon the woman’s red wallet. Out of these chinks in everyday routine grow a tangle of unruly emotions, as the man, Georges (André Dussollier), develops an inexplicable obsession with the woman, Marguerite (Sabine Azéma), a dentist and amateur aviatrix. Is Georges a melancholy romantic, an aging husband in the throes of some ongoing midlife crisis or a dangerous psychotic? Is Marguerite, with her staring eyes and blaze of scarlet hair, an endearing eccentric or has she entirely taken leave of her senses?

‘It’s cheeky and confident, maybe one of the director’s finest, and its loopy final line is the cryptic cherry on this oddball gâteau‘ Time Out