Change of Plans — Film Review By Frank Scheck, August 30, 2010 05:20 ET “Change of Plans” Bottom Line: Skip the film and go to a good French restaurant instead. The next time you’re invited to a French dinner party, you might want to give it a pass, if the tedious proceedings in “Change of Plans” are any indication. Depicting the endlessly complex and convoluted emotional entanglements among the numerous characters, Daniele Thompson’s comedy of manners doesn’t quite deliver on its tasty promise. Co-written with her son and frequent collaborator, Christopher (also part of the acting ensemble), the film, like an unfortunately high number of current offerings from France, is mainly notable for its showcasing of its terrific cast, which includes Patrick Chesnais, Marina Hands, Karin Viard, Patrick Bruel, Dany Boon, Marina Fois and Emmanuelle Seigner. As might be expected, the onscreen goings-on encompass adultery — real, prospective and imagined — health issues, divorce, midlife crises and did I mention adultery? The film’s chief imaginative conceit is switching back and forth chronologically between the dinner party and a year later, with the subsequent events forecast in ways subtle and blatant. Unfortunately, the profusion of characters and situations is more than the film can comfortably handle, especially when its observations rarely rise above the level of banality. As if aware that its culinary delicacies are of more interest than the story line, the film’s end credits include a recipe for the onscreen main course of bigos, a traditional Polish stew, credited to Seigner’s real-life husband, Roman Polanski. Opened: Friday, Aug. 27 (IFC Films) Production: Thelma Films, Alter Films Cast: Karin Viard, Dany Boon, Marina Fois, Patrick Bruel, Emmanuelle Seigner, Laurent Stocker, Pierre Arditi, Christopher Thompson, Marina Hands, Blanca Li, Patrick Chesnais Director: Daniele Thompson Screenwriters: Daniele Thompson, Christopher Thompson Producer: David Poiret Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre Editor: Sylvie Landra Production designer: Michele Abbe Costume designer: Catherine Leterrier Music: Nicola Piovani No rating, 100 minutes

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Hidden Diary — Film Review By Kirk Honeycutt, April 23, 2010 04:03 ET “Hidden Diary” Bottom Line: An absorbing French melodrama about three generations of women in a provincial family. In recent films, Catherine Deneuve, the iconic doyenne of the French screen, has played exasperated mothers, remorseful over the mistakes of grown offspring if not downright contemptuous of their miscalculations. You might think she couldn’t get harder or more frank than the resigned family matriarch in Arnaud Desplechin’s “A Christmas Tale,” but you’d be wrong. In Julie Lopes-Curval’s “Hidden Diary,” Deneuve makes plain in every gesture and glance her extreme discomfort over her daughter’s presence. The French title changed over time from “La cuisine,” suggesting the kitchen’s centrality to women’s lives, to “Meres et filles,” suggesting a generational approach to female family history. Indeed, the ghostly presence of a grandmother — and therefore the mother of Deneuve’s bitter character — makes this particular family portrait a triptych. Deneuve’s Martine is the central portrait, however, though the film, written by Lopes-Curval and Sophie Hiet, ostensibly is about the daughter, Audrey (Marina Hands). Audrey discovers a diary hidden by her grandmother, Louise (Marie-Josee Croze). It provides not only 1950s-era recipes — the one calling for calves’ liver and fatty bacon proves a hit — but also brings into question the family legend that Louise deserted her husband and children. So the portrait is not only that of mothers and daughters and the sometimes poisonous relations between them but also of two eras — the contemporary age and the more rigidly conformist ’50s — making the latter sections a kind of French version of “Far From Heaven.” The interplay between the eras, as Audrey “sees” but really only imagines scenes involving her grandparents and her mother and uncle as children, never works as well as it should. Those scenes are unreliable (very unreliable, one later learns), though clothes, makeup and attitudes are right out of a ’50s Elle magazine. Since Croze is stuck with the almost unplayable role of an inauthentic ghost, it falls to Deneuve and Hands to deliver the frosty mother-daughter dynamics. The film never makes clear why the mother transfers sorrow and resentment over her mother’s desertion to her daughter. How did Audrey grow up in Martine’s household without one killing the other? Audrey, who lives in Toronto, returns to her ancestral home pregnant, which gives her a crisis of her own. This mostly serves as an excuse to get the two combatants together, however. The film never even troubles to resolve the daughter’s dilemma. The focus remains sharply on the past and the truth about Louise’s betrayal. A superb cast makes “Diary” a most watchable melodrama, and the ending has undeniable punch. Locations along the southwest French coast are an added plus. Venue: City of Lights, City of Angels Production: Sombrero Films, France 3 Cinema Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Marina Hands, Marie-Josee Croze, Michel Duchaussoy, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Carole Franck, Eleonore Hirt, Gerard Watkins, Romano Orzari Director: Julie Lopes-Curval Screenwriters: Julie Lopes-Curval, Sophie Hiet Producers: Alain Benguigui, Thomas Verhaeghe Director of photography: Philippe Guilbert Production designer: Philippe van Herwijnen Music: Patrick Watson Costume designer: Dorothee Guiraud Editor: Anne Weil Sales agent: Bac Films No rating, 103 minutes

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