Benoit Jacquot is hard to pigeon-hole, but _Keep it Quiet_ is
a strange beast even by his standards. The director shares
writing credit with Jérôme Beaujour, who cowrote Jacquot's
_Seventh Heaven_, _A Single Girl_, _Casanova, Last Love_.
I haven't seen the last one; _Seventh Heaven_ and _A Single
Girl_ are intensely subjective and centered around a single
girl (or woman), as is often the case with this director.
_Keep it Quiet_ is very much an ensemble piece, more like
the work of Renoir or Rivette. In Jacquot's ouerve perhaps
only _Sade_ also qualifies as such, but while _Sade_ is a
lifeless directorial assignment, _Keep it Quiet_ seems an
inspired passion project. Fabrice Luchini's Gregoire
has just been released from prison and is having trouble
re-integrating into his sprawling family: aloof socialite
wife Agnes (Isabelle Huppert), philandering talk-show host
brother Louis (Vincent Lindon), bemused sister and nun (Astrid
Bas), and family matriarch (Andrea Parisy). Going AWOL from
the brother's talk show, he visits his wife's hair-dresser
Stephanie (Vahina Giocante, in what is surely among her best
roles) whom he has fallen for. Stephanie is juggling her
boyfriend just released from jail as well, and Louis her
lover. Louis seems to sleep with every woman, and in some
way he is the real protagonist; he seems to be especially
close to Agnes, who however refuses to tell him the whereabout
of her pal and his main girlfriend, who has discovered
he has a child with a third (fourth? fifth?) woman. In
one inspired scene Agnes and Louis lie in bed, touch each
other, sharing intimate thoughts -- and such is their
complicated relationship that it is hard to tell whether
the scene is incestuous or impossibly chaste. The
relationship between everyone in the family -- and out
of the family -- is like that. And everyone is related.
Gregoire runs into Stephanie's jailbird boyfriend and strikes
up a lively conversation. The boyfriend also becomes a cafe
celebrity, a big hit with the female patrons. Bit by bit,
Gregoire is reintegrated into his former life, but the film
abruptly ends. There is no real story, beginning, end. But
the acting is superb and the ineffable film is one of
Jacquot's best.

(for A.)

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