Isabelle Huppert in a drama by Andre Téchenet – The Hollywood Reporter

Isabelle Huppert in the movie “My New Friends”

Roger Arbajo

The road to bad movies is often paved with good intentions, and this is unfortunately the case with bad movies My new friends (The people of the world), a wonderful social drama by veteran French director André Téchenet.

Starring Isabelle Huppert as a grieving cop who finds herself living next door to an anti-police activist, the film tells a timely and worthy story, but it strains credulity from the beginning and never manages to win us over.

Cheney, now 80, has had some highs and lows in his long career, which includes a string of artistic successes from the 1990s (My favorite season, Wild reeds And ThievesWhich turned him into a respected international author. His last memorable work was a beautifully acted gay teen drama Being 17which premiered in Berlin in 2016. The three features he’s made since then have been less impressive.

on paper, My new friendsThe film, which the director co-wrote with Régis de Martine-Donos, has a good set-up: forensic officer Lucie (Hubert) is still coming to terms with the suicide of fellow policeman Suleiman (Mustapha Mbengi), with whom she has built a long and storied career. Private life in a quiet suburb in southwestern France. Lucy returns to her job but is unable to cope, attending rallies in support of police victims like Suleiman, while remaining isolated as she continues to mourn his loss.

This all changes when a new family moves in next door. The mother, Julia (Hafsia Herzi), is a kind and benevolent teacher who does her best to take care of her young daughter, Rose (Romain Meunier), who tends to stay away from home. The father, Yan (Nahuel Pérez Pescayart), is a loving father and a talented, but also committed, artist. Black mass An activist who clashed with police during protests and is subject to regular government surveillance.

Lucy quickly adapts to her neighbours, looking after Rose’s children and giving the couple gardening advice. When leaning on Yan’s political career, she decides to hide the fact that she is a policewoman. Like many things in My new friendsThis seems like a stretch. Won’t other neighbors know about her job and talk about it? Wouldn’t they see her driving home from work with a gun and a badge? What about her dead husband, who was also a policeman and whose pictures adorn the walls of Lucy’s house?

Most of the drama revolves around this secret, until Yan gets into big trouble with his fellow activists and Lucy decides to help him. But even this brings little tension to a film that lacks suspense or logic, with Téchiné resorting to voice-over to explain Lucie’s intentions when they aren’t entirely clear or believable. He also makes the dead Solomon cowardly return to ghost form, playing the piano in the house at night while Lucy looks on silently.

Huppert is usually the best thing in the films she stars in, but her performance here is as muddled as her character, and there’s never a moment where she comes across as credible as a cop (Lucy’s police workload is taking photographs of one’s own). suspected). Herzi and Pérez Biscayart fare better, though the pair tend to voice every thought out loud, in a clunky screenplay that often feels more like a TV movie.

Even technically, the film seems to have been put together haphazardly, with shaky photography and editing that looks very hackneyed (the running time without credits is just over 80 minutes). Other of Cheney’s films have featured some stunning moments, especially when he sets them amid the languid beauty of the French countryside. Here the directing is serviceable at best, and the result never looks pretty.

My new friends It addresses some interesting issues, whether professional versus personal obligations, conflicting political beliefs, or coping with trauma and loss, but fails to address any of them convincingly. This includes a finale that feels like a complete walkout, no pun intended. It’s as if Téchiné lacked the convictions his characters were meant to have, which may help explain why his latest film certainly means good results but ends up playing out so poorly.