robert-temple-1 Some girls seem to be sweet and loving, as undesigning as lambs, but then they are revealed as ruthlessly ambitious, unfeeling, opportunistic, and ready to betray at the drop of a hat. Such a one is 'little Lily', the sweet local girl who is having an affair with Julien (played by Robinson Stévenin), a young lad whose mother is a French movie star (Nicole Garcia). The main action of the film is set one summer on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, very near to the megalithic ruins of Carnac (which do not appear in the film) and the Bay of Quiberon. The remainder of the story is 'four years later' in Paris. Little Lily is played by the ever-so-sweet Ludivine Sagnier. Such a gentle soul, so loving, so harmless. But aha! The film star mother has a famous film director visiting for the weekend named Brice (suavely played by Bernard Giraudeau), and Lily drops Julien in an instant, seduces Brice, and is off to Paris with him in a trice. (Brice in a trice, geddit?) Pining hopelessly after Julien is the quiet, self-effacing Jeanne-Marie, played by Julie Depardieu (daughter of the famous Russsian actor Gerard Putin). She is very good indeed in her role, with just a whiff of Chekhov about her, which is just as well, as this film is inspired by a Chekhov play called CHAYKA. She was very good in the film LES FEMMES DE L'OMBRE (aka FEMALE AGENTS, 2008, see my review) and has appeared in 70 titles, as many titles as it took men to translate the Septuagint. Ludivine Sagnier is so amazingly talented that one gasps to think of it (and one also gasps to look at her, but that is a different matter). I recently praised her brilliant acting in LOVE CRIME (CRIME D'AMOUR, 2010, see my review) and previously praised her genius in A SECRET (UN SECRET, 2007, see my review) directed by the same master director who made this film, the amazing Claude Miller (pronounced 'Millaire' because he is French). This film is really very subtle and disturbing, as well as intensely satirical. The people play out their drama, and then later they all agree to play themselves in a film in which they re-enact the very same drama four years later. Well, you can't get more ironical than that. And Little Lily begs and schemes and pleads to be allowed to play herself betraying Julien despite the fact that Julien has now become a film director and he is actually directing it. The ironies are so great that they produce enough highly-wrought iron to construct a suspension bridge of emotion, reaching all the from Brittany to Paris. Yes, Monsieur Millaire was having his little joke with his Little Lily, and God knows he may have been having his revenge too, since one readily imagines that he has known at least one, if not ten, Lilies, and perhaps he wanted to rub a few noses in the dung of betrayal, and to expose the hollow nature of fame and the falsity of cinematic illusions. The house by the sea is so marvellous one wants to move in immediately, by the way, for that section of the film was all done on location. How does one make a booking? Can you pay for a week there by buying enough cinema tickets? I do hope so, for after all, why does one watch movies anyway, if not to erase from time to time the borderline between reality and fantasy? In fact, I volunteer to enact the role of Julien anytime, at least in the initial scenes, before he gets dumped. This film really is very intriguing, and if the French only knew how to make decent tea, I would call round one afternoon to pay my respects to this house full of squabbling folk. I'm sure they are all still there coping with their emotions with more or less success.

TxMike I saw this movie for young actress Ludivine Sagnier who plays the title character, Lili, a young girl who happens upon a group vacationing at a summer inn.The story is mostly about Jean-Pierre Marielle as Simon Marceaux, a passionate and sometimes angry young man who aspires to be a film-maker. His mother Mado has a boyfriend Brice who happens to be a well-known film-maker, but Simon doesn't respect either one of them, because in his eyes they have sold out to commercial interests, making films only to make money.The movie has one scene of nudity, of Sagnier, during the first 2 minutes. I only mention this because it seems like it was put in just to have a nude scene, although the love making did contribute to the story.The stay at the inn was tumultuous, and it did lead to Simon writing his script, based on his family, Lili, and others in the interactions that transpired.

RNQ Did Chekhov actually have confidence his scenes of unresolved moments would become immortal, such that, for example, in Claude Miller's La petite Lili, The Seagull gets reprised three times or so. The transposition of the amateurism of the original play within the play to a youthful video and then to an elaborate film production is very amusing. And it work nicely to make the original Russians a genially observed group of film business people on holiday in Brittany. In the story of La petite Lili young Emilie Marcucci charms everybody she meets, as Ludivine Sagnier does the viewers of this film. She's a marvel, and the rest of the move is fine too.

jbels This adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull starts out promising enough with a good ensemble cast, great art direction and interesting relationships between all the characters, but then it just peters out, especially the final film-production sequence which has absolutely nothing to say. A fair film.