New French Films at FIAF—Bruno Dumont’s “Coincoin and the Extra-Humans” and Louis Garrel’s “A Faithful Man”

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans 
Directed by Bruno Dumont
A Faithful Man
Directed by Louis Garrel

Screenings through July 28, 2019
FIAF, 22 East 60th Street, New York, NY 
fiaf.org/kinolorber.com

Bernard Bruvost (right) in Bruno Dumont's Coincoin and the Extra-Humans

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans, the unlikely sequel to Bruno Dumont’s unlikely first foray into comedy, L'il Quinquin, returns to the coast of Northern France to reprise the adventures of Quinquin, now the teenaged Coincoin, whose girlfriend Eve has found love with Corinne, prompting the borderline inept police captain Van Der Weyden to comment on Corinne’s androgyny with a bemused shrug. 

Unlike in the original 200-minute TV mini-series, which was a murder mystery, this time Van Der Weyden and his stunt-driving sidekick Carpentier are flummoxed by a goopy substance that occasionally rains down onto the picturesque landscape and its denizens. Soon there are alien doubles of several of the characters running around, including rather ridiculously Van Der Weyden himself; this invasion of the body snatchers is paralleled by an “invasion” of actual foreigners who reside in a nearby shantytown and cause uneasiness among the “real” (read: white) citizens by simply by their presence.

For more than three amusing but aimless hours, Dumont pitches frenzied physical comedy at the same level as he does his usual dour dramas (his recent feature fiasco, Slack Bay, with Juliette Binoche and Fabrice Luchini, no less, was also an out-and-out farce). Bernard Bruvost’s array of facial twitches and contortions as Van Der Weyden remain astonishing to watch, but when two Bruvosts start doubling up such tics onscreen, it’s less entertaining than enervating. 

With the arrival of a right-wing group, a la Marine Le Pen’s National Front, as a subplot, Dumont mocks the casual racism in today’s politics, but by the end—when the cops, the locals, and aliens both terrestrial and extraterrestrial dance awkwardly to a jaunty marching-band tune, an obvious reference to Fellini’s 8-1/2 finale—it’s clear that Coincoin and the Extrahumans has been one long, occasionally diverting shaggy-dog story.

Lily-Rose Depp in Louis Garrel's A Faithful Man

Louis Garrel is the son of Philippe Garrel, one of the most dispensable French directors. Unfortunately, Garrel fils seems a chip off the old block. His latest directorial effort, A Faithful Man, strains to be an adult comedy but Garrel and his co-scenarist, the legendary Jean-Claude Carriere, are too coy and lazy to exploit the material for more than its shallow surface 

Garrel plays Abel, who is dumped by his girlfriend Marianne after she tells him she’s pregnant with the child of his best friend Paul. Some years later, Paul dies and Abel hopes to rekindle his relationship with Marianne when, look who appears: Paul’s younger sister Eve—all grown up and a looker, naturally—who has decided she wants Abel for herself. 

With so little at stake—Abel gets to move between two equally enticing women—A Faithful Man seems unnecessarily extended even with its short 75-minute running time, and Garrel isn’t a savvy enough director or magnetic enough screen presence to make his character’s “dilemma” diverting. It’s too bad, for Laeticia Casta as Marianne and Lily-Rose Depp (Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ daughter) as Eve give wonderfully frisky performances, making this love triangle dramatically, comically and romantically lopsided.