_Never Ever_ seems more Ozon than Jacquot territory. It stars Julia
Roy as a performance artist and is adapted from Don DeLillo's short
story _The Body Artist_, with Roy solely credited with the screenplay.
This may account for the film's strangeness; Jacquot usually plays
a part in shaping his story.

Jacques (Mathieu Amalric) is an acclaimed movie director; his wife
(or mistress?) Isabelle (Jeanne Balibar) routinely headlines his work.
During a premiere event he chances upon a much younger Laura (Roy)
performing in a small room and is transfixed by her. He ditches his
Isabelle and the press, rides home with Laura on his too-fast motor
bike, and in practically the next scene the two are married. They
rent a house in the country, far from society, where he tries to
write, but his agent and Isabelle keep drawing him back. Amalric
wears a haunted look and the film has a feverish, hallucinatory
tone to match; I keep wondering if it is all in Jacques' head.
Then he seems to deliberately ride his motor bike into a semi.
The funeral is all too real, and features the only light-hearted
moment of the film when Isabelle hides a cell phone in the coffin
and use it to interrupt Laura's speech. After that, it is Laura
wearing haunted looks and getting hallucinations, hearing voices
in the house, talking with Jacques' ghost in the kitchen, assuming
his voice from his recordings, watching surveillance footage of his
bike just before his death. Your view of the film will utterly
depend on the degree of your appreciation of Julia Roy the actress
carrying 2/3 of the film in splendid social isolation, and I am
still on the fence. Roy has become Jacquot's new muse, replacing
the likes of Virginie Ledoyen, Isild Le Besco, and Lea Seydoux.
At certain angles she looks a bit like Ledoyen and Balibar,
especially her bird-like profile and beady eyes. I'll wait for
a rewatch before deciding on her and on _Never Ever_. But it is
bracing to see Jacquot, now in his 70s, becoming more adventurous
and daring. His lateset project is an adaption of _Suzanna Adler_,
a minimalist play about another socially distanced woman, written
by Marguerite Duras. Duras' influence is on the rise again, and
Jacquot is the perfect director to channel her, having worked as
her assistant director.

Instead of rewatching _Never Ever_, I revisited Jacquot's _Villa
Amalia_. I had forgotten that Jacquot once had another "single
girl" heroine negotiating not the minefield of her community,
but desolate, deserted landscapes. I have had reservations about
Isabelle Huppert lately but she aloofness is perfect for the role
of a concert pianist who, after learning of her husband's infidelity,
cuts loose from her family, career, possessions, and moves overseas.
Her psychotic break is as complete as Laura's in _Never Ever_.
She runs into an old friend who loves her but keeps him at an
arm's length. (It is intimated that he may be gay anyway.) The
film is elliptical in the extreme, with sharp editing and abrupt
cuts as cold and obscure as the Huppert character's chaotic
life decisions. (Her specialty is atonal classical music, which
we hear quite a bit of early in the film.) It is easy to be unkind
and suggests that the cold, unlikeable soloist must not have been an affectionate wife. Yet the film, based on ex-cellist Pascal
Quignard's novel (never translated into English), manages to bestow
her with a semblance of serenity, even grace. The film score softens
into harmonic string at the end. I found the film incomprehensible
5+ years ago and am glad I get to revisit it on DVD. One day I may
feel the same about _Never Ever_.

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