' Apres Lui ' is not the best of Gael Morel's work as a director, but it is still a fine film. In my opinion ' Notre Paradis ' is his finest; a film that I watch more often than his other films. But for Catherine Deneuve I believe this to be one of her very best roles, and that is high praise as she has consistently acted well during her career. To understand ' Apres Lui ' is difficult, and understandably so as it depends a lot upon sexual ambiguity. It opens with a scene of two young men in drag dancing and having fun on a bed and ends with someone ( no spoilers ) looking at a sleeping, half naked young man on a bed. In between these two scenes the scenario consists of a grieving mother, played by Deneuve who has lost her son in a car accident. He was one of the couple in the opening scene and the other was the driver who skidded off the road into a tree. Deneuve becomes more and more involved with the driver, to the horror of her relatives, and becomes more and more bizarre in her behaviour. Dressed in a black leather jacket, and trousers and boots to match she looks formidable, and her semi-rejection of her daughter and her new born child seemed to me an almost total rejection of heteronormative values. Her grief is intense, but so is her relationship with the driver of the car. The film is reticent about explicit motives, and this makes it for me confusing, but even more interesting to watch. Gael Morel directs and what a superb director he is, and this film to my knowledge has not received as much attention as it should have been. Sad this as it shows that many viewers lack imagination, and for me imagination is the key to any understanding of so-called difficult films.
Review of Après lui
