BOXES

France/UK, 2007, 114 minutes, Colour.
Geraldine Chaplin, Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, Natacha Regnier, Lou Doillon, John Hurt, Tcheky Karyo.
Directed by Jane Birkin.

Jane Birkin was a fashionable icon of the swinging 60s in Britain (witness Blow Up) and moved to fashionable France in the 1970s (with Serge Gainsbourg). She is a survivor and has now written and directed a film which takes us back to those times and the consequences.

Half in English and half in French and filmed in Brittany, it is like a theatre piece (and heavy on dialogue which can be histrionic and laborious) which may alienate potential audiences. As Anna (Birkin) moves around her house, she relives the meaning of the past, interacting with her parents, her children, her husbands and other characters. Once you get into the swing of it, then she reveals a great deal about human nature (and herself). The performances a striking, like those of Michel Piccoli as her father, and a characteristically fey and earthy performance from Geraldine Chaplin as her mother. The play comes very much alive when John Hurt appears as her first husband.

Sometimes difficult to stay with, but it repays attention.

1.Jane Birkin as an icon throughout the decades? Her personal history? As writer, director, star of the film? Her insights?

2.The Brittany settings, most of the film inside the house, the glimpses of the sea? The interiors of the house? The musical score? The song – and Rodgers and Hart melodies and lyrics?

3.The cast, strong, the languages, both French and English?

4.The title, the literal boxes and their being packed and unpacked, the figurative boxes in which each of the characters lived?

5.The theatricality of the film, its visual style, words and dialogue, performance, tableau, the different spaces in which the characters moved, especially in time?

6.The poetic language, the histrionic language?

7.The importance of time, memory, re-enactment of the past, examining the past, dialoguing about the past, healing the past?

8.Jane Birkin as Anna, in her fifties and reminiscing, the meaning of her life as a character (and her own life)? The opening scene with her father, his being dead, her devotion to him? The bonds in the family? The happy childhood in Wales? Isolated but enjoying it? Her father’s infidelities? Her mother bored in the countryside? The affairs? Her memories of her first husband, young, pregnant, his lack of interest, gone? Her second husband, her daughter? Relating to her third husband, the third daughter? The men arriving in her life, in her memories, their discussions? The importance of Josephine upstairs and her imagining the Belgians behind the walls of the house? The old man and the old lady, her devotion to them? Sadness, happiness, the selective memory, her having to reassess, discussion with each of the characters, especially her mother? The different relationships with her daughter(*s?)? The daughter away from home, the daughter neglected, the young daughter? Her packing, a new life?

9.The portrait of the father, Michel Piccoli, genial a roué, love for his wife, his affairs in the past, his common-sensed attitude towards his daughter and trying to instil that in her?

10.Her mother, verve, exaggerated experience, the wig, talking about the past, domesticated and yet wanting glamour, wanting to be an actress? Her love for her daughter but seeming to neglect her? Her love for her granddaughters? The dance from The King and I? In the boat with Anna, her falling, always clinging on, a symbol? Her doing the ironing? Going out with her husband at the end?

11.The portrait of the different daughters, their influence in her life, absence and presence, Fanny and her devotion to her father, going to Canada, Camille and her feeling ignored, her art, Lilli and her being playful?

12.The character of Josephine, Anna looking after her, her madness, the Belgians?

13.The old lady, the hotel studio, the old man?

14.Max, his remembering? More genial with Anna though going off, affairs? John Hurt as her first husband, the father of Fanny, his blunt and harsh attitudes towards the truth?

15.The importance of truth, memories, dealing with memories, coping and the healing of memories?