Lie With Me (Arrête avec tes mensonges) Review
By James Murphy
Olivier Peyon’s poignant sun drenched adaptation of Phillpe Besson’s Maison de la Presse Prize winning novella of the same name is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves, those we feel comfortable sharing with others, and the consequences of keeping our most vital tales locked away.
In 1984, on the cusp of adulthood, author Phillipe Besson read The Lover by Marguerite Duras while living in the rural farming town of Barbezieux that grows the grapes that fill the barrels in the Cognac cellars. Duras’ semi-autobiographical recalling of a forbidden love resonated with Besson, a teenager discovering his sexuality. Lie With Me is Besson’s homage to both Duras’s work and his first love affair with closeted bisexual ladies man, Thomas Andrieu.
Guillaume de Tonquédec stars as successful romance writer Stéphane Belcourt, based on Besson, who returns home after a three-and-a-half decade absence as the guest of Cognac producing winemakers for a key-note speech. Belcourt encounters and then bonds with Lucas Andrieu (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo’s grandson, Victor Belmondo), the son of his teenage lover. Lucas, and the audience, incrementally learns the heartbreaking truth behind Belcourt and Andrieu’s 1984 summer, as the action seamlessly flashes back. Julien De Saint Jean and Jérémy Gillet are magnetic as the young lovers.
Lie With Me is a deeply human work that traverses the universal terrain of first loves and heartbreaks, middle-aged regrets and reflections, the loss of a parent or a child, and the quest to make sense and to find solace from it all. While the cinematography, which captures the idyllic French landscapes, will have you booking flights, you will first need to make a détour to the tissue box and, then, to the wine cellar. Lie With Me is a richly poetic masterpiece which may rip open wounds in your heart while reminding you that we should never take moments of love for granted when we find them.
Five stars
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