‘Finally’ Review: Claude Lelouch’s Bizarre Male-Crisis Comedy Feels Like a Farewell
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Five years ago, French writer-director Claude Lelouch returned, for the second time, to the site of his greatest career success with “The Best Years of a Life,” an autumnal sequel to his trend-setting 1966 romance “A Man and a Woman” that felt elegiac in multiple senses — not least since it turned out to be the final onscreen appearance for both its stars, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée.
Anyone who assumed it might be Lelouch’s sign-off, however, was quite mistaken. He’s made three features since, the latest of which, “Finally,” seems fashioned from its title down as a sort of career summation from the 86-year-old filmmaker, but not portentously so.
A peculiar, weightless confection that bounces antically between narratives, perspectives, periods and varying grips on reality, it treats even grave mortal matters with near-cartoonish buoyancy.
Premiering out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, accompanying a career-achievement award presentation to Lelouch, his 51st feature is an unapologetically self-involved work, strictly for the director’s most devoted admirers. (A French release has been scheduled for November 13, but it’ll be a far harder sell elsewhere.) Loyalists may have fun parsing various in-jokes and nested references to Lelouch’s own oeuvre, as once again, he delves into his sizable back catalogue for inspiration, this time landing on some deeper cuts.
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