London Flm Festival: Copcabana Review

This would be the second Isabelle Huppert film I have seen at the London Film Festival thus far and Copacabana is a far superior film to the disappointing Special Treatment . Babou (Huppert) is an initially very annoying Frenchwoman who has flitted from place to place in her life, enjoyed her travels and perceived rebellion against bourgeois society, yet failed to put down roots and now finds herself unemployed. She has a daughter, Esme (played by Huppert’s real life daughter Lolita Chammah), who is much more strait-laced than her mother and is marrying a boring executive. The final straw comes when Esme tells her mother not to attend her wedding, partly to save her from paying for any of it but mostly because Esme is embarrassed by her. Distraught, Babou finds work as selling time share apartments on the Belgian coast, where she starts to rebuild her life.

Babou soon begins to compel rather than irritate and Huppert’s performance is laudable. Though the film is a little on the long side as the plot meanders its way towards conclusion, it was genuinely heart warming and even cathartic to see Babou find limited success in her new role, in spite of competition and jealousy from her unfriendly colleagues. Babou finds the time to adopt a homeless couple, which provides an interesting parallel to her daughter and her partner – would Babou really prefer her own child to be destitute rather than bourgeois?

The film is not flawless and two instances are somewhat unbelievable – firstly her driving three hundred kilometres in a single evening to France and back to repair her daughter and son in law’s relationship behind the scenes and the clumsy deus ex machina that ends Babou’s problems. However, the film is an unpretentious and enjoyable light comedy that will provide relief from some of the festival’s more heavy-going films – and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.