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Just so...so bad

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It would of course be wrong, not to say foolish, to speculate that Robert Guideguian has got politics out of his system and is now back in the mainstream, because, for better or worse, once a radical ... witness our own Ken Loach (and if only he'd move to Ireland since he loves it so much) who can't lose those chains that bind the workers; Guideguinan is a French Ken Loach with talent and here he features his favorite trio - wife, Ariane Ascaride, Gerard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin who, when they get together as are good as it gets. After a mis-spent youth heisting furs they have gone their separate ways with Meylan running a strip joint, Darroussin running boats and drugs on the side and Ascaride running a chic boutique, the Lady Jane of the title. A phone call telling her that her son has been kidnapped and she needs to get next to some serious money to get him back, kick-starts the plot and who better to help her, natch, than her two ex-partners in crime. What it has going for it in spades is superlative acting by the three leads which more than compensates for the rather pedestrian plot and personally I'd go a long way - on foot if necessary - to watch a trio like this on the top of their game.

Well kind of literally. This movie (thriller) revolves around three characters who have something in common. A secret from the past. But don't be afraid, this thriller won't really stretch anything or will leave you in the open for too long (a flashback will come along and explain something) ...Of course this can also be seen as a bad sign. And unfortunately the movie does suffer from some of the failings a thriller can have. They don't drag the movie completely off the rail, but they sure make it a less stronger impact, than it could be. The actors are good, but are not so good, that they elevate and/or make you forget about the story flaws.

Muriel (Ariane Ascarde), François (Jean-Pierre Daroussin) and René (Gérard Meylan) are a trio of longtime friends who grew up together in working-class Marseille. As the film begins, Muriel learns by cell phone that her teenage son Martin (Giuseppe Selimo) has been kidnapped. She calls on François and René to help her raise the ransom. Only later we learn that the three, Muriel included, share a criminal past and were the trio in old-men masks distributing stolen furs free to slum denizens in the pre-title opening sequence. Like some other scenes, this opener is a visual shock accompanied by loud noise, in this case electronic music. There's a shooting scene that makes the most hardened viewers jump.The team split up years ago after one of them killed a jeweler in a parking garage. They've gone straight since, more or less. The need to raise lots of cash fast leads to new crime but not in coordination this time, and things go badly wrong again. Now that they're middle aged and bourgeois whatever idealism those free furs symbolized has faded into hopelessness and routine. François doesn't even love his pretty wife and daughters and wants to revive his old romance with Muriel, but no chance of that.At present Muriel has a perfume business she runs out of a nice shop on a square in Aix. She calls it "Lady Jane," a nickname her father gave her from the Rolling Stones song. François runs a boating center some drug runners use. René has a strip club and rents out game machines to cafés. They're legit, but their straightness, especially in the case of René, is just this side of shady. The French call this kind of film a "policier;" but the only actual policeman we see is a young lieutenant (Pascal Cervo) who briefly asks a few questions and then disappears. Guédiguian drenches the screen with images of the three principals' faces in emphatic closeup--especially Ascarde's grim, stony stare. He mouth remains a tight little line but sometimes a few tears drop down her cheeks. I'm guessing like the director she's of Armenian origin, and her stoical mug recalls the immortal deadpan of Charles Aznavour in 'Shoot the Piano Player.' Hard to know what's behind it besides a diminishing enthusiasm for life. Only in the final scene do we find out this is a double revenge story, one that concludes with an old Armenian saying: "One who seeks revenge is like the fly that bangs repeatedly against a window, when there is a door that lies open." In Guédiguian's rethinking, revenge is a dish that never tastes good, hot or cold.'Lady Jane' opened in Paris under two weeks before its US debut at the San Francisco film festival. Some French reviewers said the burnt-out mood of the trio reflects disenchantment with the Sixties. If so, this is a somewhat heavy-handed way to convey it, and indeed while some elements of 'Lady Jane' work very well, others don't. The symbolism and existential monologues slow things down, and the jagged and jarring use of flashbacks doesn't really succeed in linking past and present. The film's obvious strengths are Guédiguian's rapport with his actors and the way he uses them and his rapid editing of boldly shaky sometimes amateurish feeling camera images to recast a crime thriller (with plenty of violent acts) in harsh naturalistic terms, dropping slickness in favor of vérité, so that you sympathize with these characters even as you deplore their destructive behavior. There are some odd twists that keep you curious about the action (even though it's slowed down too often), and some classic French noir trappings remain reassuringly present: the stolid expressions, shiny cars, nightclub scenes, a tense failed rendezvous in a train station, and some effectively shot violence. But in dwelling on atmosphere Guédiguian holds back on story details so long that he has to resort to a glib, hasty finale where explanations of motive and identity are spoon-fed to us at the last minute as in a slick mystery or a TV cop show. Still, if you have the stomach for it, this is good stuff, with US theatrical potential and a good reception in France.Seen at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival.

A vengeance within vengeance within vengeance story.A dark, devastating movie. No hope at all. It takes place in Marseille.The son of a middle aged woman - ex hood herself - is kidnapped, and the mother asks her old friends for rescue, help her to find the ransom money.It's a film about friendship, lost youth, nostalgia, and of course vengeance. A radical tale.The characters are engaging, and the topic is not foreseeable. We have not here the good guys vs the bad guys scheme, so many among us expect.We can also note the presence of the trio of actors Robert Guedigian usually chooses for his films: Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gerard Meylan - the guy who looks like Steven Seagal...