The Big Picture is a French film that revolves around the successful lawyer, Paul Exben (Roman Duris) and his slowly but typically eroding nuclear family life and how a New Zealand wine plays its part in revealing his wife’s lover…
The Big Picture / L’homme qui voulait vivre sa vie
Directed by Eric Lartigau. Starring Romain Duris, Marina Foïs, Niels Arestrup and Catherine Deneuve.
The Big Picture is a French film that revolves around the successful and technology-loving lawyer, Paul Exben (Roman Duris) and his slowly but typically eroding nuclear family life.
The signs of stress on the marriage begin to show early, but then a New Zealand wine called Cloudy Bay (the audience loved the French pronunciation) plays its part in revealing his wife’s (Marina Fois) lover is the man who chased the dream of being a photographer which he had given up to provide for his now dissolving family.
A somewhat civilized French confrontation between the two men leaves blood on the hands of our protagonist who realises that his perfect life is now well and truly down the drain decides in a rash moment that it would ruin not only his life, but that of his wife and children if they knew he was now a murderer, so he decides the best option is to take the lover’s identity and flee the country.
He not only takes the man’s identity, but takes his career and assumes the role of travelling photographer extraordinaire and heads off in the victim’s car for the Adriatic coast. Here his photographs get noticed by a drunken man (Neils Arestrup) who crashes on his couch that night but turns out to be the Editor of the large local newspaper who publishes his shots the day after their small town tirade and then catapults him into galleries and potential international fame. He realises that with this coverage will come photos of him- the wrong face for the name -and again is left to decide his own fate, and perhaps again abandon his new life and leave the new budding love he has found in Ivana (Branka Katic).
Adapted from Douglas Kennedy’s 1997 book of the same title, there is an apparent shift from the USA to Europe. Though that may sound like a slightly typical progression, something about it made it seem less predictable, more volatile and yet accidental and became a much more believable story, because these small nuances make things a little more imperfect than your average Hollywood production.
Ariana Gillrie, 15 July 2011.
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