Review of Orpheus (2013) by Kevin N — 12 Jul 2011

A film that is full of paradoxes- which are the precise things that make it both a success and a failure. The biggest one is Orpheus himself, a figure pulled from Greek mythos and turned into a modern plot character.

In the former, characters are less products to be admired or sympathized with and more devices to drive home certain philosophies, but here Orpheus is dropped into film narrative where our interest lies in our caring about him.

I didn't. He's a man who thinks little beyond his own whims and, before the story is over, cheats and destroys his wife and starts a love affair with death. But despite his total lack of sympathetic qualities, he is an interesting disaster (as Greek figures often are) and his story is fascinating- particularly because of Cocteau's generous but modest visual effects.

Here is a film that stands as proof that a movie can bend reality right in front of our eyes without needing a multi-million dollar budget. Cocteau's signature fascination with backwards and slow motion and trick montage editing leads to some truly magical moments; particularly, he turns mirrors into mesmerizing set pieces.

The one performance I admired above all others was by Francois Perier, who plays Heurtebise. He balances the story's two planes by being a realm of the "other world" and having a heart straight out of this one.

The performance is gentle but startlingly effective. The other beauty to the film is a verbal one. Cocteau's poetry fills the story with great and provocative dialogue. Heurtebise says at one point, "A picture of your wife is not your wife," a total Cocteau-ism and the type of provocation that sticks with you long after the movie ends.