Vincent Lindon actor, always gives me the impression of having accepted the role of his life. Each film in which he plays – in fact he does not act, he lives – is his best, each time he plays his most masterful role. He always convinces more and more.
In Le Choix by Gilles Bourdos, he is this man, that evening, this man of an existential before and after. This man made clairvoyant.
He receives a phone call in the night, on the high-risk construction site of a building that he supervises, a call that we know nothing about and which we understand is that of a life that will have to be revisited. How old is this man who has become serene in the depths of his inner conviction? Sixty, that age when the midday demon is supposed to have disappeared, if it ever intervened to tickle man. Sixty and that evening we know, at the precise moment when he receives this call, that this man is already no longer the same.
His procrastination is released in the hollow of the passenger compartment of his vehicle, on the highway, on the ring road. In the course of reckless calls, sometimes even borderline for his safety and that of other drivers, this man, free from fear, to whom nothing more can happen than the call he received and for which he has planted everything and cut the road, the situation reveals itself. Complex. Neither good nor bad. Neither on one side nor the other. Extraordinary rather than binary. The time of a car journey, a place conducive to reflection and analysis if ever there was one, driving protected by a superior force, allows this man to reach his truth, that of a life. Now crystal clear. Danger has left the path of this sensitive, sincere, honest and responsible man. This man who loses and wins everything equally, as if one side canceled the other, perfect equality, anode and cathode, during a two-hour car journey.
This man doubts the truth for the first time. We know this because before, he didn't know he had ever doubted. For the last time too.
In the car, it would of course have unnecessarily justified an unfolding whose mystery unfolds interlocutor after interlocutor, oscillating between private life and career, Machiavellian choice, the director could have included in the soundtrack, breathing between two anxiety-inducing calls, the song by Étienne Daho: “Boulevard des Capucines”. Included in the recording “Live Salle Pleyel”, created for the “Obsession Tour”, featuring titles so cinematic that they could have sequenced this stunning film: “L'invitation”, “Saudade”, “Le grand rêve” , “Obsession”, “Mythomaniac” and “Promises”, “Operture”, “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life”. An “Introvitation” to take the road on which man goes towards his destiny.
“To grant me your forgiveness / you know what an atrocity / this war / my departure / what a mistake / what a waste of time…”
With the voices of Emmanuelle Devos (Catherine), Pascale Arbillot (Béatrie), Micha Lescot (Damien), Grégory Gadebois (Garcia) who interact (among others) with Joseph Cross (Vincent Lindon), remarkably alone on stage.
