On My Way (Elle S’en Va)

Overview

Director Emmanuelle Bercot takes Catherine Deneuve on a wild ride across the French countryside in this eccentric and funny — if somewhat higgledy-piggledy — road trip meets family comedy.

Deneuve is Bettie. Crowned Miss Brittany in her glory days, she’s now the middle-aged manager of a failing restaurant and caregiver to her interfering mother (Claude Gensac). When her non-committal lover takes up with an attractive 25-year-old, she jumps into her golden Mercedes and cuts loose.

As the melancholic strain of Rufus Wainwright’s ‘This Love Affair’ rolls out, we know that we’re not about to see Deneuve in her signature ice-maiden guise. Even though Bercot invented Bettie specifically for the French icon, she certainly wasn’t limited by a temptation to typecast. One of On My Way’s many charms is its exploration of Deneuve’s warmer, more vulnerable side.

Bettie’s spontaneous departure carries her on a string of outrageous adventures. The bumming of a cigarette from a solitary, timeworn farmer leads to an unexpectedly intimate conversation. In a sleazy nightclub, an infatuated young local named Marco (Paul Hamy) employs an excess of caipirinhas in a rather uproarious attempt at seduction involving an enormous pink afro. Finally, a phone call from an enraged, bitter daughter (Camille) means that Bettie winds up with company — in the form of her grandson, Charly (Nemo Schiffman).

On one hand, the scattershot narrative construction, the haphazard unravelling of characterisation and occasional improbabilities run the risk of losing momentum. The depiction of Bettie’s troubled relationship with her daughter, for example, never penetrates beyond a fairly simplistic sketch.

On the other, the script is pleasingly fresh and witty — light on it might be, but it’s thankfully devoid of contrived, overworked passages. A raw, real-life feel permeates throughout, intensified by Guillaume Schiffman’s (The Artist) adoption of a handheld shooting style and the casting of Deneuve alongside relative unknowns and even non-professional actors. Indeed, much of On My Way’s appeal lies in Deneuve’s embracing of such an atypical role — even when confused, waterlogged and run ragged by the vagaries of the road, she still oozes charisma.