Valley of Love **** (2015, Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Dan Warner) – Movie Review

French cinema icons Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu star as long-divorced couple Isabelle and Gérard, legendary actors who keep a strange appointment in Death Valley, California, both separately answering letters from their photographer son Michael, which they received after his suicide six months ago. He asked them to spend a week together at different sites in Death Valley, promising to appear to one of them.

The acting is top rate from Huppert and Depardieu enjoying – no, relishing – quirky roles, with quirky dialogue in a very quirky movie. Valley of Love might be annoying or entrancing, according to taste. I found it funny, appealing, involving and moving. Huppert and Depardieu share great screen chemistry.

The tourist trap of Death Valley is lovingly and scathingly explored by Guillaume Nicloux, who allows forgiveness and compassion for his larger than life characters, and negotiates a drama that is both realistic and supernatural, with a posthumous request at the start and a ghostly visitation at the end.

Depardieu’s real-life son Guillaume Depardieu died in hospital near Paris on October 13 2008, aged 37, after contracting severe pneumonia while filming The Childhood of Icarus on location in Romania.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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