Goblin-grinned actor-writer-director Amalric is no stranger to such a calculus it appears to be his point of departure as an artist. It’s no wonder, then, that so many filmmakers make nostalgia-fueled revisionist accounts of their personal lives and the historical milieus that shaped them, and, in some cases, cast themselves-and their friends and lovers-as characters in their own self-fashioned celluloid dreams. Cinema, the “art of ghosts” per Jacques Derrida, has always commingled the real and the imaginary, conjuring as it does an uncanny realm that gives shape to feelings, desires, beliefs. The text grows fuzzy it becomes something else. Like tears seeping into a printed image, the details warp and the colors swell and bleed into one another. In Mathieu Amalric’s Hold Me Tight, grief transforms. Hold Me Tight, written and directed by Mathieu Amalric, While Hold Me Tight may not be in the same sphere as those two films, being in their company is quite the achievement.Vicky Krieps as Clarisse in Hold Me Tight. It is a film in dialogue with the aforementioned Drive My Car and It’s a Wonderful Life. Saying much more about film would ruin the story. Hold Me Tight works and it keeps the viewer interested in Clarisse’s journey. The story’s undeniable simplicity is a fair critique however, one that is not fatal to Amalric’s project. It is not lost on me that Amalric is telling a quite simple story that is enhanced by the trickery of narrative fracture. In fact, in a flourish of bravura, Almaric picks up the pace toward the end of Hold Me Tight and in terms of the story he is trying to tell, it works. If the pacing is not right, the film feels off. Pacing in storytelling is an underappreciated component it acts like the right amount of salt in a dish. In fact, what initially annoyed me about Hold Me Tight-the disjointedness of the storytelling leading to its unsteady rhythm-became the film’s most satisfying aspect. Around the forty-minute mark, however, everything clicked for me. This is due to the fact that Amalric fractures the narrative by going back and forth between Clarisse’s journey and her husband’s struggles with the two children. It is a mystery that draws you in.Īdmittedly, it takes a while to get into the flow of Hold Me Tight. If she is so deeply yearning for her family, why did she abandon them? That is the mystery at the heart of Hold Me Tight. She even buries her face in the ice of a fish display at a market. She engages in drunken unwelcomed hugging of strangers at bars. And, speaking of erratic behavior, Clarisse surpasses all of them. The answer, we learn from scenes depicting increasingly erratic behavior by both husband and kids, is not well. She imagines how her husband is coping with the care of their children. She listens to tapes of her daughter practicing scales-one cannot help but be reminded of one of 2021’s best films, Drive My Car. We are not sure why she is going there, but we cannot help but notice a deep melancholy residing in her. Clarisse embarks on a road trip to a mountain lodge. She seemingly walks out on her husband (Worthalter) and kids (Bowen-Chatet, Ardily). And goodness, does he make good use of his talented actors-Vicky Krieps ( Phantom Thread), Arieh Worthalter, Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet, and Sacha Ardilly.Ĭlarisse (Krieps) is the glue that holds the story together. While it is not his first attempt at directing ( The Blue Room), Hold Me Tight may be his most assured. The prolific Mathieu Amalric ( The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Venus in Fur, The Grand Budapest Hotel) is behind the camera this time instead of in front. It is the melancholy of waking, reaching over to feel the comforting warmth of one’s partner, and realizing that they are not there. The melancholy that runs through Hold Me Tight is a distinct one.
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