Le Refuge

A typically slow-paced drama from François Ozon, Le Refuge follows an ill-tempered Mousse (Isabelle Carré) as she learns that she’s pregnant and subsequently heads to an old friend’s beachfront home to kick her addiction – with her solitude interrupted by the arrival of her dead boyfriend’s homosexual brother (Louis-Ronan Choisy’s Paul). There’s little doubt that Le Refuge improves marginally as it progresses, with the far-from-likeable nature of the central character initially preventing the viewer from wholeheartedly connecting with the material. Though Carré offers up a stirring performance, Mousse remains entirely unsympathetic for much of the film’s opening hour – which isn’t terribly surprising, admittedly, given her prickly demeanor and penchant for saying the absolute wrong thing at any given time. And although there inevitably does reach a point at which Mousse becomes a relatively compelling figure, the relentlessly uneventful nature of Ozon and Mathieu Hippeau’s screenplay, coupled with the movie’s slow-moving sensibilities, ensures that Le Refuge, even when it does improve, never becomes anything more than a mildly watchable drama (with Carré’s affecting work ultimately setting the movie apart from its similarly-themed brethren).

**1/2 out of ****