This 1992 French film from the director of the classic “Betty Blue” is an interesting exercise. Petty criminals—an impoverished Parisian graffiti artist and his twelve year old next door neighbor and constant companion—get pressed into delivering a truck load of gnome statues to Grenoble. On the way, they steal a car and find in the backseat an ailing old man beautifully played by French screen and recording legend Yves Montand. They all end up on a quest, but for different things: the old man wants to find a mystical, mythical lake and an old girl friend, the graffiti artist wants to find a nurse he has recent fallen in love with, and the young kid wants to see snow.
The three of them wander through the forest while Montand spiritually communes with nature and does some tricks that imply he has some kind of… power. But who knows. Along the way, plot lines get started and abandoned. References get made and are never uttered again (the titular Island of Pachyderms gets a fleeting mention—seems they are trees by a lake…maybe). A certain amount of these dropped plot lines and forgotten references simply come off as part of the story. But after a while, it seems like Beineix either is at a loss of where to go, or simply gets sidetracked by the next moment (whatever happened to the truck full of gnome statues, presumably filled with drugs?). It comes off as a bit amateurish and scattered, but the story doesn’t suffer too much because of it. Perhaps others would disagree: I have a high tolerance for ambiguity in art.
Anyhow, the real reason to watch this film is Montand. He does a lovely job of portraying a love-sick man at the end of his life. In fact, Montand died at the end of filming. In an interview, Jean-Jacques Beineix said, "[H]e died on the set... On the very last day, after his very last shot. It was the very last night and we were doing retakes. He finished what he was doing and then he just died.” For his last film appearance, Montand should be proud. It is a nice legacy and nice way to go out.
Recommend? Sure, but there’s no hurry…
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