Secrets From Out Of The Past

No brief plot synopsis can adequately summarize Andre Techine's gripping "Alice and Martin." It unfolds in time-hopping, elliptical style, dropping its psychological clues like bread crumbs in a dense forest of narrative. Techine, who has become, late in his career, one of the masters of French film ("Wild Reeds," "My Favorite Season"), never wastes time with the formulaic: it's the complexities and ambiguities of relationships that inspire his charged, lyrical cinema.

The mystery here is Martin (Alexis Loret), a troubled young man from the provinces who flees to Paris to live with his gay half brother, Benjamin (Mathieu Amalric). Sharing Benjamin's dumpy apartment and his life is violinist Alice (Juliette Binoche). Martin finds sudden, unexpected success as a model--a career that accentuates the blankness that seems to be at his core. Obsessed with Alice, who separates her feelings from her sexuality, Martin eventually wins her love--only to push her away and retreat into madness when she becomes pregnant. There's a guilty secret in his past he must purge before he can come back to life.

Shot and edited with crisp flair, "Alice and Martin" keeps flying off in unexpected directions, anchored by Binoche's dark, obstinate passion. Loret doesn't have her weight on screen, and his inexperience keeps the movie from achieving its full potential. But Techine's filmmaking dances circles around most current directors: next to the novelistic richness of this fascinating, flawed movie, most of this summer's fare looks like kid stuff. D.A.

© 2000