Les Herbes Folles

I like my French cinema like I like my French women - horrific, sexual and extremely violent. Films like Irreversible, A ma souer, and Martyrs. While sometimes hard to watch and at other times simply dull to watch, these movies make their points and stay submerged in my consciousness for a long time after I watch them. Which is, if nothing else, good value for money.

Les Herbes Folles exemplifies a less appealing side of French cinema. Called Wild Grass in English translation, its respected director Alain Resnais seems to think that whimsy is a substitute for storytelling. But it isn't. Amelie was whimsical, but it had charm, a heart, a story. This, on the other hand, has none of these things.

Well, I suppose I ought to concede that it does have a story of sorts. This sorry tale is of a quirky middle-aged dentist and flying enthusiast whose purse is stolen and discarded, before being found by a middle-aged, miserable layabout with his own equally quirky but rather unsavoury personality. The latter, who is married to an implausibly young, attractive lady, begins stalking the former. The dentist is initially wary - as she should be - but soon comes round to finding it charming. Things vaguely build to a lacklustre crescendo.

The film is 104 minutes long, but it feels like 104 hours. The characters are so unpredictable and their actions so implausible that any dramatic tension soon dissipates. The director seems to be aware of the drab piece he has created, for he teases the viewer with two false endings before finally putting us out of our misery.

Is Les Herbes Folles, then, just a joke at the audience's expense? If so, the joke is well-calculated - but it's also rather insulting.