02/09/2010

The seventh edition of Venice Days at the 67th Venice Film Festival officially kicked off with the international debut of veteran director Bertrand Blier’s The Clink of Ice [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a dark but hopeful comedy about a man who comes face to face, literally, with his fatal illness.

French superstar Jean Dujardin plays Charles Faulque, an alcoholic writer who never goes anywhere without his bottle of wine, and wine bucket full of clinking ice. His work and marriage have long since fallen apart and, to make matters worse, his health fails him as well, which he finds out when his brain cancer (Albert Dupontel, another star of French comedy) shows up at his door. The cancer is annoying, talks too much and is here to stay, until Charles kicks the bucket.

Things brighten a bit when his maid Louisa (the ever-soulful Anne Alvaro) declares her love for him, though she too is soon visited by her own cancer (Myriam Boyer). Their diseases befit them: the creatively blocked Charles develops brain cancer while the lonely Louise who hasn’t been with a man in years comes down with breast cancer.

At the film’s post-screening Q&A, Blier admitted that a topic as gloomy as death isn’t very welcome in French cinema, or typical. “The French don’t like talking about death,” he said. “It’s a subject matter more typical to Northern Europe, the Swedes, Bergman. But since we’re all losers in the fight against death, all we can do is laugh, so that we can live as long and as well as possible.”

Which is precisely what Charles and Louisa hope to do, by outwitting their new companions and proving wrong Charles’ cancer, who insists that evil always wins in the end. In fact, the more the humans fight, the more irritated their cancers get. They start to spread to spite them – they don’t like it when people cling to life.

Alvaro, who accompanied the director and the film to the Lido, said that making the film was actually an easy experience. “When you have the good fortune to have a good story and script, along with such a director and cast, all you have to do is fulfill your role as an actor. What’s more, I shot all my scenes in sequence, so I could slowly enter into the role, and slowly fall in love.”

The film’s hopeful ending is an open one, supporting what seems to be the credo of “The Clink of Ice,” Blier’s cinema and existence itself, in a line Charles tells his son: “Life is sometimes wonderful, and sometimes it’s shit.”

The Clink of Ice was produced by Thelma Films and Manchester Films – with co-producers Wild Bunch, France 2 Cinema, Herodiade and Plateau A – for approximately €5.5m. It was released domestically last week by Wild Bunch Distribution, which also handles international sales.