Hideaway/ The Refuge (Le Refuge) (2009) Review

Le Refuge (English title "Hideaway") (2009) France, Francois Ozon
3.5/5

It is hard to believe this intimate character drama is from the same director of Ricky (2009) which is a fantasy drama where a baby develops wings and can fly. This beautifully photographed piece is small and quiet. The concept may have been melodramatic, but the strength of acting and direction make the plot more than the sum of it's parts, instead giving the characters depth, full of flaws that make them believable and empathetic if not necessarily likeable, but that's French film for you. It could be easy to make this film political, as it surrounds a pregnant woman who overdosed on heroin and her continued ambivalence towards the pregnancy making her behaviour questionable. The story focuses on Mousse (Isabelle Carre) the pregnant woman and Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy) the gay brother of her deceased lover. On paper this film could have been soap opera fodder, a pregnant heroin addict living with her lover's brother who is gay, her lover dead after overdosing on heroin. Instead of making contentious issues of the behaviours, actions, sexuality etc of the characters, Francois Ozon carefully lays out all the elements without judgement. Somehow he captures the character of an ambivalent woman, ambivalent in her grief, her addiction, towards motherhood and more. This unlikely pairing make for a quiet and interesting couple, making is a sort of off-beat drama. In some respects it evokes memories of Candy (2006) and Australian film depicting the relationship of a couple addicted to heroin and addicted to love, but Le Refuge (2009) is no where near as harsh and edgy as Candy and in some ways Le Refuge is closer to the Hollywood style, merging French/ European film making style with Hollywood narrative elements. This film is overall a soft piece and by that I don't mean it is 'soft' as in 'weak', rather it is a slow, sweet and melancholic piece where the characters are thoughtful, brash, real, flawed and a bit uneasy. Le Refuge has some intriguing and evocative elements, the small cast brilliantly portraying the undertow of emotions, but this film is not over-the-top or melodramatic, although I wish it was a little more challenging. While, it does fit under the category of "French New Wave" cinema, as it clearly does not fit the mainstream of French nor Hollywood cinema, it is really only a dramatic narrative piece surrounding some unusual themes. While the visuals are beautiful and performances are great the narrative is quite simplistic, but it is the emotional journey and conflict between the desires and roles of the characters that make this film interesting. Focusing on the internal conflict within themselves. Both Mousse and Paul are searching for themselves in some way and also both stumbling to grieve for a man they both loved. Overall, it is a melancholic yet beautiful film. However, it did leave me wanting more, despite the challenging aspects, it seemed too predictable in parts and favoured a more closed ending than is common to the French new wave film.