Life was dark when French painter Claude Monet, regarded as the father of impressionism, took on the grand scale Water Lilies at the age of 74, a series of around 250 paintings depicting the water garden at his Giverny home. The year was 1914. His son had recently died, World War 1 had just begun, and another son was heading to war. Moreover, he himself was losing his sight and was almost blind. During all this grief, he created one of art history’s most impressive painting cycles.
It’s not for nothing that these paintings have a connection to our depressed, and to say the least, stressed protagonist Elisabeth (Agathe Rousselle) in “A Second Life”, which is having its world premiere at Tribeca Festival in the international narrative competition, and later heading to Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Like Monet in 1914, Elisabeth can’t see any hope. The bright, suicidal, and hearing-impaired woman is a so-called world citizen. She was born in Hong Kong grew up in Senegal, and has a US passport, a French accent, and a broken heart. She likes to observe Monet’s Water Lilies at Musée de l’Orangerie and looks like a variation of Lisbeth Salander; you notice her arm tattoos and sad eyes. She is a modern girl, a bit Marxist with an edge.
We get to know her in July 2024 just as the Olympic Games are approaching, an event she calls “a big universal illusion, opium of people type thing”. As her visa is about to expire, she has to work as an Airbnb concierge to be able to stay in Paris, a city she dislikes but for some reason wants to live in. Running around to show rude guests their short rental places, she must navigate the city with Elijah (Alex Lawther), a free-spirited, good-hearted, pink-haired and rather annoying Californian client with flower thoughts who asks idiotic questions. Right in the middle of the Olympic opening ceremony, with millions of newly arrived and excited tourists, Elisabeth’s mood drops. The already tight schedule is at stake as she faces pressures from her employer, who tells her to smile more.
As the premise promises, this is a pulsating roller coaster of a day, fueled with energy and shot with a constant moving camera, reflecting Elisabeth’s anxious soul. The director Laurent Slama seems to have a thing for Paris vibrations. He previously made “Paris is Us” (2019) and “Roaring 20’s” (2021)- winner of the Special Jury Mention and Best Cinematography Award at Tribeca Festival, a film that used a continuous one-and-a-half-hour-long sequence shot through the streets of Paris.
Previously working under the pseudonym Elisabeth Vogler, the director now gives his protagonist the same name. A name that is borrowed from Liv Ullmann’s stage actress character in Ingmar Bergman’s classic “Persona” (1966) – the one who suddenly stopped speaking and was taken care of by Bibi Andersson’s chatty nurse on the island of Fårö. Despite the huge differences between the two characters, the link between Elisabeth Vogler’s muted (on her own free will) actress and our hearing-impaired protagonist (caused by an illness five years ago) may be the unwillingness to continue living as it has been. And their isolation in a world that doesn’t understand them. For Elisabeth in “A Second Life” though, the hearing loss is stigmatized and creates fatigue, uncertainty and distance.
The theme of looniness and mental difficulties runs through the film. Even the happy-go-lucky Elijah, who works with hypnotherapy, deals with it. But his exaggerated optimistic point of view on life irritates her. Their future friendship feels unlikely and false. That is also what the director wants to explore – genuine relationships are out of reach in an urban, modern environment. Elisabeth tries to drown the loneliness with this relationship, even if it’s fake. Yet, for the viewer this idea becomes forced. So does often the dialogue and the voiceover that repeatedly lacks edge and wit. Sentences like “I’ve been drunk on sunrises when the world seems so empty” or “only dead things grow from regrets” don’t help.
The false reality in Elisabeth’s life is emphasis by the Olympics in the City of Light – nothing is real when the city is an event. These impressive shots on location among people, when the actual Olympics took place, create an authenticity, an almost documentary feel. Hundreds of strangers pass her by, underlining her seemingly endless loneliness.
The biggest strength of the film though is the astonishing actress Agathe Rousselle. Similar to her role in Julia Ducournau’s Golden Palm winner Titane from 2021 (a very different film), she plays an asocial, odd outcast with a mix of insanity and warmth in her eyes. In A Second Life her persona is also enigmatic, she walks around like a walking volcanic eruption but tries to keep it together. Nevertheless, she doesn’t have a feverish sexual attraction to cars nor a killing instinct as she did in Titane. Instead, her desire is to just hear the surrounding, to find peace in life, and to be able to grieve her losses. Perhaps the secrets lie in the fleeting moments of light and color in Claude Monet’s Water Lillies. The secrets for a second life.
Grade: B-
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