Movie Review: ALICE AND MARTIN
Red

ALICE AND MARTIN
Reviewed 9/11/2000
On weeknights, Nancy and I usually watch a movie with dinner, and because we are cheap and organized, we have a large library of films taped off cable. Bravo is our mainstay, providing an endless stream of well-made small obscure intriguing subtitled European movies. In the typical Bravo movie, good foreign actors, all but one or two of them complete unknowns in America, deal with quotidian family and relationship problems, always well acted but often unsympathetic and dull.

For me, the crisis point in a Bravo film comes forty-five minutes in. Dinner is over and my eyelids grow heavy. If my shutters drop, the foreign speech washes over me in a white noise and I pleasantly doze for a few minutes, only to awaken trying to figure out what happened before Nancy catches on. Usually nothing has.

ALICE AND MARTIN is a fine Bravo movie. Troubled illegitimate son Martin flees in a panic from his natural father's lugubrious disciplinarian house and then, after three homeless wet miserable weeks, finds his way to Paris, where his gay half-brother Paul is living platonically with aspiring violinist Juliette Binoche. (She is a sensitive intelligent woman and a fine actress but except for the chance to act in French, her native language, one wonders why she took on this role.) He finds success as a male model, inexplicable love ensues between the two of them, and life is rosy until his Past Begins to Haunt Him.

At this point, were this a Bravo movie running on your VCR, you would pop the cassette and watch something else. Having invested in two movie tickets, Nancy and I chose to stay despite seats impossible to fall asleep in. You can avoid our mistake by waiting until the movie's inevitable appearance on Bravo.

ã Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith