Un amor incompleto (A missing part)

FROM THE WEST WITH LOVE

“I’m not from here, nor am I from there,” could summarize the character played by that great actor, Romain Duris, whom viewers have known since he was very young when his adventures in Shared apartment (2002) and its sequel Russian dollsby Cédrik Klapisch, until its consecrations as in The beat of my heart (2005), that great film, remake of Fingersa little known from the late ’70s with Harvey Keitel.

Jay is a chef, turned taxi driver who works at night, in a Tokyo that he knows inside out. He is French, but speaks Japanese perfectly, and knows the streets and locations better than the locals. He finishes his day already during the day. He complies with the rules of the large taxi station where he returns the car, and goes to sleep. He looks exhausted and not very smiling, it could be a “Taxi Driver postmodern”, if it were not for the neatness of the car, the city and the current era, but something of zombie and escapism denotes its routines and days.

However, Jay is on his way out, he is selling his house and is about to return to his homeland. His only company seems to be a small monkey, a pet that follows him around his house clinging to his neck (later the plot will expand on the union of that animal and what it refers to).

The iron script progresses slowly, but never stops. Jay is helpful, empathetic, sharing French books with a Japanese bookseller, who learns from him and says he will “miss him a lot” when he leaves. Until one day, when she is sleeping in broad daylight, she receives a call from a lawyer: we have to help a French citizen, who is having a nervous breakdown because her ex-husband won’t let her see her son. Jay will then get involved in that type of drama, of which he knows a lot, and will weave – when everything seemed lost – a story of search and redemption. At the moment of departure, hope will be reborn.

From there Duris will give his character an admirable awakening and rejuvenation. Not far behind are the desperate and sometimes uncontrollable Jessica (Judith Chemla) and the discreet, gentle and charming little Lily (Mei Cirne-Masuki).

Japan, in the middle of the first world, where current laws do not allow parental authority for both parents, if they decide to end their relationship, and deprives the other party of having contact with their child again until they reach the age of majority, without ceasing to contribute with the child support fee and their legal commitments.

Both the Belgian director Guillaume Senez and his main actor Duris learned about these types of stories when they presented their previous film in Japan. Where is she? (2018) which also addressed the topic of paternity. From the West, this type of practice seems so archaic and distant that the film itself, without falling into explicit lines, deliberately marks and involves the viewer in their own connection with parenthood, rights, the law, what is fair or unfair, and how the State will or will not ensure the health of a child. The law will only change in 2026, as announced, although the lost links are already and will be irreparable.

An incomplete loveis that fresh air that the billboards need and crave, almost devoid of this European cinema, a few months after the also small premiere of François Ozon’s latest film, When autumn falls.

The director Guillaume Senez will be Belgian, but although he does not film from behind over his shoulder or in a frenetic manner like his countrymen, the famous Dardenne brothers, he ends up also making a film of denunciation in his own way. Congratulations.

(France, 2024)

Address: Guillaume Senez Script: Guillaume, Jean Denise. List: Romain Duris, Judith Chemla, Mei Cirne-Masuki. Production: Jacques-Henri Bronckart, David Thion. Duration: 98 minutes.