I left the theater slightly dazed and made my way towards my first genuine stinker of this year: L’OEIL DE L’AUTRE (lit. “the eye of the other”), a French film by director John Lvoff, if the spelling in the program is to be believed. Lvoff?? Silly names aside, the movie is a pretentious pile-up of overdone art-house clichés.

Main character of the story is a girl working as a technical photographer, who is sent out for an interesting but stupidly executed science project, where once a year the exact same picture of a landscape is taken to track large time-scale changes in form. Stupidly executed because half the pictures are of non-descript ruins, trees and buildings, and not of the (beautiful) landscapes obscured by them. Which sort of makes me wanna go there and cut down that tree.

Anyway… she is replacing a well-known English photographer who has disappeared mysteriously during his last time roaming the French Provence taking cliched-art-photos posing for stupid-scientific-purpose-pictures.

Her employer and mother’s ex makes a stilted attempt at making a pass at her, which she cuts off decidedly. Julie Dépardieu (daughter of famous actor Gerard D.) plays the girl, whose character was so annoying I refuse to remember her name. But I’ve looked it up and it’s Alice. And yes, Lvoff is really called Lvoff who therefore should get the award for Name Most Sounding Like Pitoff, whose name is always a bad sign for the movies it’s even remotely connected with.

Alice is very shy and insecure, and is lost for having a genuine voice and probably even personality of her own. But hey! Wait! I get it! There’s a connection with her lack of having a look (or no, I should say a regard, ofcourse) of her own and her being a photographer replacing another photographer! And with her having to take technical exact replica’s of other pictures! And with her boss making a pass at her! She also meets Juliet, the photographer´s mistress in the Provence, who should be noted for her bizar performance. I seriously believe the director shot her full of mescaline and told her they were filming some lame fantasy flick where she stars as The Ominous Oracle.

Luckily it’s not all boring and depressing encouters for Alice, as she meets a semi-handsome and free-spirited dude (he paraglides, you see) in the hotel she stays in and has a little romance. Sadly these scenes still remain boring and depressing encounters for the audience. Mostly due to the fact that her new lover and his friends are so free and open, and joyous, but she’s so insecure and closed, which results in her acting like a rude, impolite, total jackass to most people she meets. Jeez man, I’m insecure about many things as well, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be polite!

But, on the positive side, mademoiselle Dépardieu is nice to look at, and her bland acting I blame mostly on monsieur Lvoff, who is apparently a big fan of the mandatory 1,5 second Significant Moment of Silence after each and every single fucking line of dialogue spoken in the movie. Jezus, I could have been out of that theater at least twenty minutes earlier if the editor had done his or her job properly. But I sat it out, just so that I could have the justified satisfaction of writing this review and confirm my fears that there really is no interesting character development or satisfying thematic conclusion in this film.

I think I selected it from the program based on the short description, and was hoping for some nice shots of the French countryside, but alas, there’s maybe three of them in total out of a hundred-and-something bland ones. I’d like to conclude my time wasted on this steaming heap de merde with one last bit of trivia, which might be a saving grace for a few lucky ones out there: the English photographer, who we see on pictures several times, is played by none other than Otar Iosseliani! A name that means absolutely nothing to me, but according to the festival-catalogue he’s worth an exclamation mark after his name, so I thought I’d pass that one on to you guys.

IN MY FATHER'S DEN