If Hollywood ever get their hands on the rights to this film, it will probably end up being some vapid rom-com flick where the gormless acting is only matched by the asinine script. Fortunately, in the hands of director and co-writer Jean-Marc Moutout, The Feelings Factory is, instead, a sardonic exploration of love and loneliness in a world where people feel that they no longer have the time to spend on finding their partner-for-life. Instead, they must find ways to expedite the process.
This film features rising French star Elsa Zylberstein as Éloïse, an attractive thirty-something property lawyer who suddenly finds herself wanting more from life. She has been mostly single following the break-up of a long-term relationship when she was younger. However, this now bothers her. In fact, her loneliness motivates her to partake in an exclusive speed-dating evening, where she can spend seven minutes each getting to know seven men. Most of the encounters that Éloïse has are predictably awful for her and humorous for the audience. However, while all seven men may choose her afterwards, she only has eyes for the self-assured fellow lawyer Jean-Luc (Bruno Putzulu). In doing so, one of the men that she turns down is an intelligent, but extraordinarily disgruntled-with-life loner in André (Jacques Bonnaffé).
The film goes on to explore the outcomes of Éloïse’s night of hoping for long-term relationships from seven initial minutes of hello-bob-and-how’s-your-uncle, with both Jean-Luc and André featuring again. However, it soon becomes abundantly clear that she faces another challenge – one that is gnawing away at her on the inside and shredding any self-confidence that she has. As a result, the audience sees this beautiful, sophisticated, and intelligent woman in danger of falling apart because she feels that she has no one to truly turn to, despite an apparent abundance of friends and associates. It is a strange sort of loneliness, yet one so familiar to any unattached big city dweller.
On the whole, this film is a simple, but effectively portrayed depiction of modern-day life, where people are obsessed with how little time they have in their lives as they rush from Billy to Jack, yet yearn for stability and long-term fulfillment in their lives. The final scenes of this film are an apt, but cynical take on such attitudes. On the whole, it would seem that with greater individual freedom lies greater individual pain, isolation, and dissatisfaction. Enough, in these circumstances, is never enough.
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Elsa Zylberstein presented this film last Thursday night, as part of the Irish Film Institue’s French Film Festival. Afterwards, she provided some generously expanded answers to a variety of questions about her acting method, the film that the audience had just seen, directors that she likes to work with, and, of course, her superb acting in this year’s I’ve Loved You So Long. A confident, versatile, and ambitious actress, Elsa is hopefully just one leading role shy now of much greater international exposure.
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Bruno Putzulu, Elsa Zylberstein, Jacques Bonnaffé, Jean-Marc Moutout, La Fabrique des sentiments, The Feelings Factory
