★★★★☆
There has been plenty of scorn poured on the pair at the heart of this flawed but touching drama. Matt Damon’s Bill Baker is a baseball-cap wearing, self-described “f***-up” from Oklahoma who works on oil rigs and construction sites, is a recovering alcoholic and addict and says grace at every meal, even if it’s a foot-long sub. Virginie, played by Camille Cottin from Call My Agent, is a sophisticated actress from Marseilles with arty friends and a chic wardrobe. They make an unlikely couple, but that’s kind of the point.
Bill has travelled to Marseilles, where his daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), has been in prison for five years, having been convicted of killing her Arabic-French girlfriend, Lina, while she was a student in the city. There are echoes of the Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher case here, although Allison is very different to the confident Knox. Like her father, she is weighed down by low self-esteem. Damon and Breslin exude defeat in the way they hold themselves. While he is a movie star to his boots, Damon is one of the few who can really convince as an Average Joe. He shambles very convincingly.
The writer-director, Tom McCarthy, who made the Oscar-winning Spotlight, wrings plenty of comedy and pathos from Bill’s struggles to clear Allison’s name. There is another possible suspect who hasn’t been investigated, but Bill speaks no French and has no clue about the volatility and cultural nuances of the city. “This kind of thing could only happen in Marseilles,” says Allison’s lawyer of the case, a line that got a big, knowing laugh from the audience when the film premiered in Cannes.
While Bill charges about like a bulldozer at a ballet, his daughter seethes in her cell. Somebody reads him a letter that Allison wrote to the lawyer in which she says — crushingly — that her father is not capable of helping her. That’s a red rag to this already wounded bull. Enter Virginie, who is the single mother of nine-year-old Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). Virginie helps Bill with his linguistic and local issues, while he fixes her fuse box and cooks burgers for Maya. “Seeing what you eat, I know why you pray before every meal,” Virginie says with a smirk. Her friends are fascinated by this hefty, inarticulate creature, wanting to know if he owns a gun and voted for Trump. He does and he didn’t — as a former felon he wasn’t allowed to vote.
There are a lot of moving parts here and not all of them work perfectly. There’s a far-fetched coincidence, a lurid turn of events and twists that you can see a mile off. You just know that Bill is going to get mixed up in stuff beyond his understanding. Yet there are also moments that live with you. In one scene Allison is allowed out on day release and drives with her father to a secluded bay that you just know she visited with Lina. Breslin has had a chequered career since breaking through in 2006 in Little Miss Sunshine. Here, though, she really earns her corn, taking in the view with a mixture of relief and regret, before diving into the blue water.
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Damon has some sweet scenes, too, with little Siauvaud, who teaches him French by listing the tools in his workshop. And he and Cottin riff off each other well, a collision of two contrasting types of charm. Sure, they’re an odd couple — but I’ve known odder. And you can imagine them being drawn to each other because each has what the other doesn’t. He needs a fresh start, she needs solidity. It’s not quite as simple as that — “life is brutal” goes Bill and Allison’s mantra. Yet McCarthy balances the brutality with flashes of hard-earned sweetness.
15, 140min. In cinemas
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