Copacabana
Cinema Nova, 05/01/2011
Movie #2 for 2011
Who’d’ve thought that a character study of an endearing, charming, but flawed person turns out to be a endearing, charming, but flawed film? So much of the film revolves around Babou (ISABELLE HUPPERT, The Piano Teacher, I Heart Huckabees), that so much of its success depends on her too.
Babou is separate from the mainstream, a grown-up hippie who still behaves a bit like a teenager. She shuns conservativism and materialism and is interested in people who do the same. Sadly, this doesn’t include her daughter Esmerelda (LOLITA CHAMMAH, Huppert’s real-life daughter) who is deeply resentful of her fractured, drifting childhood and who is rebelling by marrying her tie-wearing boyfriend.
After a serious, rift-making fight, Babou moves to Ostend, the poor-weather beachside resort town in Belgium to prove to Esme that she can find – and keep – a job, selling time-share apartments to English tourists. Turns out that she excels at it. She befriends a range of locals but still remains isolated – she almost seems to inhabit another, parallel world – but she does so with a kind of charming serenity.
Although there are a few laughs, the film – like Babou – is more gentle than that, a deep smile instead. Endearing, but flawed.
