Strayed (Les Égarés) | Review

The civilized world meets moderate anarchy and the results are baffling to say the least.

Based on the novel by Gilles Perrault, this is a portrait about fortunate people in the process of becoming less fortunate. In the same vein as Bon Voyage, this features WWII threat of German occupation and focuses on the plight of one family. Taking refuge in the openness of the forest and then in an abandoned barricaded home with a good supply of red wine, Odile and her two children are lead to safety by a complex character, a 17-year-old troubled youth (Gaspard Ulliel), whose survivalist skills make up for his lack of schooling. In a hardly convincing role of the matriarch, Emmanuelle Béart (8 Femmes) plays an emotionally fragile young mother whose survival instincts are nil, but her ability to play house is up to par. With a large eye loop, the film follows the progression of Odile’s character where her internal conflicts seem to affect her sense of judgment.

Haphazardly inserted black and white documentary stock footage depicting the war-torn exodus hardly matches with the slight displacement and the moderate feeling of despair found in André Téchiné’s text. Preferring a formula that evokes a complete sense of aimlessness, Strayed is vacant in creating authentic tensions in the plot and sparse on conveying true, tragic emotions of a family in crisis. Instead, the drama of the film is supplied by an ambiguous relationship between a meat provider and a lonely and confused adult which often shows Odile going through the motions rather than truly living them out. Instead of examining the core of her matter, Téchiné’s cumbersome approach leaves the character in a state of naïveté and leaves the viewer with a lack of understanding.

Téchiné’s Strayed is an uninvolving chronicle where the lack character development makes for a fairly aimless journey, one that sees a union between two cut short and not provided with enough depth. In the end, the film concludes with a bogusly poetically tied-on sentiment which demonstrates that the director had no notion on how to convey his character’s needfulness. This is an easily forgettable film, one that never gets inside the minds of its character and never gets inside the trenches of difficult human feelings.

Viewed in original French language in English subtitles.

Rating 1.5 stars