Watching Nicole Garcia's visually stunning _From the Land
of the Moon_ on the big screen, I keep asking myself why
the director isn't more acclaimed in film festival circuits.
Set in the South of France in the 1950s, around the time
Garcia came of age by the Mediterranean, the film has the
feel of a dream which is eerily precise, lived-in. The
sepia toned peasant scenes evoke pastoral paintings by Millet
and Courbet. The sun-drenched landscape is rendered with
exquisite dolly shots (Garcia always knows exactly where
to halt camera movement), made all the more remarkable
by a female protagonist completely unaware of the beauty.
Gabrielle's family's acres may be dusted in gold, but
Garcia makes sure they are redolent of toil and sweat
-- a gentle rebuke to the the young lady's idle self-
obsession. As her story progresses, the dusty fields
give way to bourgeois seaside idyll, and then briefly but
crucially, to a snow-bleached health spa up in the Alps.
The pointed changes in palette, elevation, and lighting
are effective chapter breaks; they highlight the film's
literary structure and origin. There is even a framing
device having to do with Tchaikovski's Barcarolle de juin.
_From the Land of the Moon_ also boasts the most beautifully
rendered love scene I have seen in years. (The scene is
perfect because, after all, it turns out to be imagined.)

Marion Cotillard's Gabrielle is a scandalous romantic who
only has eyes for elegant older-men. When a band of Spanish
travelling laborers (dressed like they just got off the
_Days of Heaven_ set) pass through, her mother forcibly
marries her off to the foreman to forestall more gossips.
At first their relationship is beyond frosty. Respecting
her aloofness, he resorts to visiting prostitutes,
whereupon she demands to be paid for sex too. But her
mother has good intuition; the son-in-law she chooses rises
in station, becoming rich enough to afford Gabrielle's
6-week stint in Switzerland. Whether it is because she
finally has a friend (a chambermaid from hometown), finds
discipline in the regimented life, or because she runs
into someone truly ill whom she can nurse back to life
(Louis Garrel, playing a lieutenant afflicted during the
French military adventure in Indochina), she gets much
livelier and better. He becomes the love of her life.
But when he disappears from the spa and fails to answer
her love letters, she suffers a complete breakdown. Many
critics question the final twist in the story, as though
we don't all know people who have tenuous grasps of
reality but still manage to be "successful" in life and
in politics.

If there is one bone to pick about _From the Land of the
Moon_, it is the casting and acting of the lead actress.
The popularity of Marion Cotillard is likely the reason
the film gets released in the U.S. at all. Unfortunately
Cotillard turns in her trademark listless, detached turn.
Perhaps her barely-there persona fits the protagonist,
a prozac-addict before its time. But watching the film
I can't help recasting the role in my head. Louise
Bourgoin, star of Garcia's last film and a one-time
feckless ingenue who has grown into a powerful actress,
would have been memorable as Gabrielle. Adele Haenel,
whom I just saw in _The Unknown Girl_, would at least
have been willful.

_From the Land of the Moon_ deservedly received 8 Cesar
nominations in France and was was in contention for
the Palme d'Or. In the U.S. it is savaged by critics.
The screenplay, although based on a 2006 novel by Milena
Agus, is somewhat old-fashioned and makes no attempt to
pigeonhole its protagonist into a feminist icon or martyr
of patriachy. Gabrielle is not meant to be likeable; she
is conflicted, and distant towards her son and husband.
That husband, against all odds, turns out to be a really
decent human being, perhaps the true hero of the film.
That may be one reason the art-house critics who pander
to millennial hipsters and heap praise on _Top of the
Lake_-style reductionist morality don't know what to
make of it. _Moon_ may be Garcia's most accomplished
film. The director uses her considerable visual flair
to advance the story, so that form matches content and
a deeply satisfying, synthetic whole emerges. Which is
a lot more than can be said of the critics' darling
Jane Campion. When will they start backing
woman-directors who really deserve our admiration?

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