Alex Lutz’s “Guy” is the delightful surprise of the season. Gauthier, a young journalist, learns from his mother that he may be the illegitimate son of Guy Jamet, a Yéyé singer from the 60s embarking on a vintage tour across France. He decides to create a documentary-portrait of the artist. The result is a magnificent film about the passage of time.
Alex Lutz’s direction is both effective and highly original: the young man films concerts, daily life, and “celebrity” moments using a subjective camera technique. This approach could have been cumbersome and repetitive, but, enhanced by some (fake) archival footage, it flows seamlessly and allows viewers to almost clandestinely enter Guy’s world.
Guy is portrayed astonishingly by Alex Lutz himself, who is twenty years younger than his character (kudos to the makeup artists). Guy Jamet is portrayed as grumpy, macho, irritable, cynical, petty—in a word, insufferable! Yet he is also vulnerable, generous, funny, loving—in short, endearing!
The classy ending avoids the “big” scene, and the supporting characters are incredibly accurate (a magnificent… and disturbing appearance by Dani). The “period” songs are actually original creations, but they could have been hits on “Âge tendre et tête de bois.”
However, be warned, Guy is not a nostalgic film (no, things weren’t better in the past) but a melancholic one. During the film’s 101 minutes (a tad too long, a common indulgence for many contemporary films), Guy’s character constantly reminded me of a reflection by a Woody Allen actress in September, which I recently rewatched on DVD:
“It’s awful getting old. Especially when you’re 21 in your head. The forces that sustain us throughout our lives leave us one by one. And when you look at your face in the mirror, you realize something’s missing, and you discover it’s your future.”
by Patrick Mottard
