French ‘Widow’ overdoes it

Hollywood is often portrayed by angry Republicans as a subversive pit of liberalism, but they have nothing on the French. “The Widow of St.-Pierre” tries to make a profound statement about the death penalty (it’s bad) but focuses far too much on being a message instead of a movie.

I actually agree with the film’s stance, but its method of getting the point across is as subtle as 10,000 volts to the brain. Emir Kusturica plays Neel, a sailor who murders his captain in the small coastal town of St.-Pierre, in 1850s French Canada. Neel is sentenced to death, but the town has no guillotine to execute him with. They order one from France, but it could take months or even years before it arrives.

Enter Madame La, played by Juliette Binoche (“Chocolat”). She persuades her husband (Daniel Auteuil), the Captain of the barracks where prisoners are kept, to allow Neel to work in her garden, drag her sled across the frozen wastes, and in short become her slave rather than stay in a cell. Surprisingly, this redeems Neel of his crime in a matter of five minutes or so. Neel gradually becomes more friendly with the entire town, and now no one outside of the cartoonishly evil town government wants to see him killed. However, the guillotine (the “widow” of the title) is making its way toward St.-Pierre.

Auteuil, Binoche, and Kusturica are all excellent in their roles. However, their characters are one-dimensional and exist only to serve the anti-death penalty message of the script. Madame La is never given any motivation to save Neel, and she and the Captain are portrayed virtually without fault. Kusturica tries to show Neel is still wracked with guilt, but the script has him happily impregnate a widowed fishwife. The town leaders are similarly one-dimensional in their desire to see Neel dead. One gets the sense that if railroads were a part of 1850s Canada, they would have tied Neel to the tracks, twirling their mustaches all the while.

Patrice Leconte’s direction doesn’t help matters either. Leconte (“Ridicule”) tries to imitate a variety of styles, and never comes close to realizing his own or even integrating others’ well. One scene would be shot trying to appropriate the frozen solemnity of Fargo, and the next would have the jerky, unfocused, hand-held camera of “The Blair Witch Project.” The austere whiteness and virtual colorlessness of northern Canada are captured well, but often hampered by grainy cinematography. Overall, the film is directed poorly.

While “The Widow of St.-Pierre” contains good acting, acting itself can only take a movie so far. The didactic and overwrought script is difficult to read onscreen (or listen to, if one speaks French), and the schizophrenic direction is annoying to watch. There are probably better, more even treatments of the death penalty on film, so go spend your money on them. “The Widow of St.-Pierre”’s main message seems to be that the French can make overly preachy Hallmark card movies just as well as Hollywood can.