“When Margaux Meets Margaux”– Movie Review

This past weekend, I attended another screening at The French Film Festival of The Film Society Of Lincoln Center, attending the New York Premiere of the comedy, “When Margaux Meets Margaux” (aka, “La belle et la belle”). 

Synopsis

When a young woman meets an older version of herself, will either of them benefit from this improbable encounter?

Story

Margaux (Agathe Bonitzer) is a young woman who is doing her best to enjoy life in her twenties -- she has a steady rotation of young men with whom she sleeps and always looks forward to meet other men to share such pleasures.  On the other hand, there’s also Margaux (Sandrine Kiberlain), a career woman in her forties, who never married or had children. When the mature Margaux has to leave town for a funeral, she takes the opportunity during her visit to attend a party held by a friend’s relative -- the only problem for her is that the overwhelming majority of the other guests are significantly younger.

While at the party, she happens to run into the younger Margaux; when they begin to chat, they learn that they have an incredible amount of things in common above and beyond merely their first name.  In fact, when each find out exactly how much they know about the other, it becomes downright spooky. Quite by coincidence, they wind up on a train going back to the same town. They take advantage of this by spending an inordinate amount of time together to sort everything out; once they exchange information they determine that they must be caught in some kind of rip in the space-time continuum. 

As they spend time socializing, the younger Margaux is introduced to the older Margaux’s long-time friend Mark (Melvil Poupaud) -- a former lover of hers.  Future Margaux tries to impress upon present Margaux that he is the one that got away; she made the mistake of not valuing their relationship, which is why she finds herself alone to this day.  The three go on a ski trip together where mature Margaux tries to impart a good bit of wisdom and advice to her younger version -- whether she’s receptive to it or not. During the trip, the younger woman incurs a severe head trauma as the result of a fall, resulting in amnesia.  Will this cause the “spell” to be broken when the young woman no longer remembers who Margaux is?

Review

“When Margaux Meets Margaux” is one of the truly remarkable women’s films because it touches on multiple themes within the same story:  motherhood, sisterhood, friendship, romance and of course personal life choices which you may or may not foresee yourself making in the future or past choices which you come to regret later on in life.  So many themes are not easy to balance all at once, but the filmmaker somehow manages to pull it off quite nimbly. The movie is for, about and by women; as such, it views the world through a feminine prism (young Margaux is played by Agathe Bonitzer, who is writer/director Sophie Fillières’ daughter in real life). 

As far as the performances are concerned, Bonitzer comes off as perpetually sad or angry or frustrated (which apparently is not distinctly different from her real-life persona, as evinced in the post-screening interview).  By far, however, Sandrine Kiberlain as the older Margaux stands out; the portrayal of her Margaux emanates humanity and wisdom that only comes from surviving life experiences. What is curious about watching these two women interact is that although Kiberlain is “future Margaux” and Bonitzer is “present Margaux”, they sometimes relate as big sister-little sister and at other times you feel more of a mother-daughter type of relationship. 

Following the screening, there was an interview with writer/director Sophie Fillières and the movie’s star, Fillières’ daughter Agathe Bonitzer.  Fillières said that when she began writing the screenplay, she started out with a very simple idea:  What if two women had the same name?  The longer she thought about the idea, the more she was convinced that the concept needed to be expanded:  these two women must be the same person but with a substantial age difference.  She didn’t want the story to veer off into science fiction, which is why she didn’t cast the same actress in dual roles.