The superb saga AU REVOIR LA HAUT (See You Up There) is a cinematic triumph, a little bit Beauty and the Beast, a little bit Paths of Glory, a little bit Phantom of the Opera, and a whole lot of satisfying storytelling and spectacle.
Sublime cinematography, deliciously detailed design, pitch perfect performances conspire to make AU REVOIR LA HAUT one of the great cinema going experiences of the year.
Beginning with an awesome aerial shot tracking a French army Alsatian dog across the battlefield and into the trenches on the eve of the First World War Armistice, AU REVOIR LA HAUT presents its credentials as a grand scale epic from the first frame.
The hubris and horrors of war, the slaughter and the sacrifice and the contrasting forging of friendship amongst the carnage, are startlingly depicted in a first act that sets up a story that ripples into peacetime and the civilian life of two comrades at arms.
Albert is rescued from entombment from the battlefield by Edouard who in turn is saved by Albert after an explosion knocks him off his feet and his jaw from his face. Both are witnesses to a war crime committed by their commanding officer, Pradelle.
More pressing than than bringing the offensive officer to justice is disguising the disfigured Edouard and getting him back home for the prosthetics surgery he needs. Edouard is emphatic he wants to be officially known as killed in action so that he does not have to face his father or sister and their plot to switch identities with a soldier fatally felled on the field makes them artificially complicit with Pradelle.
Settling into civilian life, Edouard, a talented artist, turns out biting and blistering pamphlets on war profiteering and the appalling lack of caring repatriation for the returned servicemen, especially those maimed physically and psychologically. He also does a nice turn in mask making, concealing his disfigurement in a dazzling array of masks, fancy facades and faux visages that give the film a surreal feel, a fairy tale quality that suffuses the narrative with absurd comedy amid the solemn and serious aspects of the story.
Cinematography by Vincent Matthias is sweeping, sumptuous and just plain swell, a wide screen execution that has no superior so far this year.
The score, by Christophe Julien, is similarly stupendous, music that evokes, stokes and supports the various strands of this monumental movie.
Costumes by Mimi Lempicka are stunning and gorgeous, augmenting character and the exquisite Production Design by Pierre Queffelean.
Directed by Albert Dupontel who also co wrote the screenplay with the author of the book on which the film is based upon, Pierre Lamaitre, AU REVOIR LA HAUT boasts an impressive cast, led by Dupontel himself as Albert, as expressive in eyes as in anything that rolls off his tongue. Indeed, there is something of the silent screen in the technique employed, redolent of the era it is set, an inspired choice that enhances the characterisation.
Edouard’s devastating and disfiguring injury reduces him to grunts and groans, so the actor Nahuel Perez Biscayart plays him accordingly with expressive eye and body language.
As the villain of the piece, and of the peace, Pradelle, Laurent Lafitte is the embodiment of the big screen baddie, a cad and bounder, a bag of effluent attaining affluence, a nasty bit of goods of which there is not a skerrick of good.
The incomparable Niels Arestrup plays Edouard’s estranged industrialist dad with gravitas and a great gulf of grief submerged, affectingly and effectively emerging in the film’s denouement.
Newcomer and certified scene stealer Heloise Balster makes an impressive debut as Louise, a little girl who befriends Albert and Edouard and literally becomes Edouard’s mouth piece.
AU REVOIR LA HAUT casts a spell of magical moviemaking and achieves a rare stature of screen entertainment. See you up there.