the big picture (l'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) 2010 (romain duris) region free dvd5 french bcbc

The Big Picture (French original title L'Homme qui voulait vivre sa vie - "The man who wanted to live his life"), is a 2010 French psychological thriller directed by Eric Lartigau, and starring Romain Duris, Marina Foïs, Niels Arestrup and Catherine Deneuve. The story is adapted from the 1997 novel The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy.

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Spoken Language: French (some Serbian, English)













Synopsis

Successful Paris attorney Paul Exben (Romain Duris) has everything going for him, including power, wealth and a picture-perfect family. But the mirror suddenly cracks when Paul discovers that his wife, Sarah, is carrying on an affair with a photographer. After a tragic error closes the door on all that he's achieved, Paul makes a fateful decision to escape, fleeing abroad to try and begin a new life as someone else altogether.



Cast

Romain Duris, Marina Foïs, Niels Arestrup, Branka Katic, Catherine Deneuve, Eric Ruf, Enzo Caçote, Luka Antic, Rachel Berger, Esteban Carvajal-Alegria



A Fugitive’s Identity Theft Has a Highly Personal Twist

‘The Big Picture,’ Directed by Eric Lartigau

The Big Picture

NYT Critics’ Pick

By STEPHEN HOLDENOCT. 11, 2012

The adage “It’s never too late to be who you might have been,” ascribed to George Eliot, is given a cruel twist in the terrific French thriller “The Big Picture.”



This loose adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s 1997 novel might be described as “The Talented Mr. Ripley” for the age of Google. Its story of Paul Exben, a successful Parisian lawyer who assumes the identity of a man he accidentally kills, belongs to a select circle of twisty top-notch Gallic suspense movies that include Lucas Belvaux’s “Rapt” and Guillaume Canet’s “Tell No One.”



If some of the plot details defy credibility, Romain Duris’s electrifying performance makes you overlook any inconsistencies, as his likable character becomes a man on the run barely able to stifle his panic. Mr. Duris, 38, has been a major French star since “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” Jacques Audiard’s 2005 French adaptation of James Toback’s “Fingers.” In “The Big Picture” he is as compelling, if not more so.



Mr. Duris’s Paul has the springy agility of the young Mick Jagger and the same crinkly mischievous grin that conveys a Mephistophelean charm; the resemblance is so striking that in many shots he suggests a hairy-chested fraternal twin of that Rolling Stone.



As the movie begins, Paul’s apparently charmed life with his wife, Sarah (Marina Foïs), and their two young boys seems about to become even cushier with the announcement by his business partner and mentor Anne (Catherine Deneuve) that she is dying and plans to turn their law practice over to him. Sarah, who is not impressed, believes that Paul, a once-promising photographer, is a security-obsessed wimp who, to use a ’50s cliché, has sold out his talent.



When Paul discovers she is having an affair with their neighbor Gregoire (Éric Ruf), a struggling photojournalist, they quarrel and Sarah demands a divorce. Paul visits Gregoire, and in a confrontation that flares into violence accidentally kills him. Aghast at the thought that his children will grow up believing their father is a murderer, Paul covers up the crime, fakes his own death in a sailing accident, and exchanges identities with Gregoire, on whose cellphone he sends messages saying he left for a last-minute photo assignment in Hungary.



Paul eventually lands in Montenegro. (In the novel, his character, Ben Bradford, flees to Montana from Connecticut.) For lack of anything else to do, he buys a secondhand camera, constructs a darkroom, and begins taking pictures. His buried talent blooms, and a gallery pursues him. But as international recognition looms, his ruse is almost certain to be exposed.



Unlike “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Antonioni’s “Passenger,” “The Big Picture,” directed by Eric Lartigau, doesn’t bear down heavily on its themes of exchanged identities and second chances. Paul is not a sociopath like Tom Ripley, and the movie does not convey the same diabolical Hitchcockian sense of being manipulated by a slightly sadistic master puppeteer. As the story sprawls across the screen, it darts from one incident to the next as though it were inventing itself as it goes along.



But what starts out as a variation on a standard fugitive drama takes on a steadily deepening poignancy once Paul assumes residence on the Adriatic coast (gorgeously photographed by Laurent Dailland). He collapses in tears once he has time to brood over his separation from his beloved children, and at one point starts a confessional letter to Sarah.



Identity theft may be rampant nowadays, but “The Big Picture” explores the other side of the coin — the claustrophobic notion that it is increasingly difficult for a person to disappear. On the deepest level, Paul’s adopting the identity of a man who pursued the very dream Paul abandoned has paradoxical ramifications. Even after he becomes what he might have been, he can’t follow through.