neumu [ cinematronic ]




	I'm Going Home
	Manoel de Oliveira Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Sylvie Testud 2001		With deliberation, delicacy and an eye for the bustle and throb of contemporary Paris, Portuguese writer/director Manoel de Oliveira addresses the disintegration and resignation that tragedy brings to a vital, popular French thespian in his later years. De Oliveira's "I'm Going Home" is given even more power by screen veteran Michel Piccoli ("La Belle Noiseuse," "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"), whose nuanced evocation of Gilbert Valence, the actor in quiet crisis, lingers long after the lights go up. Valence is starring in a production of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco's "Exit the King" when he gets the horrifying news of an auto accident that has killed his wife, daughter and son-in-law. This leaves Valence, numbed by his loss, as the sole guardian of his young grandson. In time, Valence continues on the stage, he and his housekeeper care for the child, and life seems to go on. But eventually, the calamity that devastated his family needs to be faced. With John Malkovich as an American director who hires Valence for a film role and Catherine Deneuve as the leading lady in the Ionesco play.