Never Ever

Combine the worst indulgences of French arthouse cinema with the most pretentious postmodern American literary fiction, and you have a tedious snoozer of a film like Never Ever. Based on the 2001 novella The Body Artist by Don DeLillo, this film by Benoit Jacquot aspires to appeal to self-punishing cineastes who "enjoy" films like Last Year at Marienbad. Morbidly serious to its core, Never Ever is ostensibly about an aging French film director named Rey (Matthieu Amalric) who has tried to alleviate his post-mid-life crisis by ditching his longtime leading lady Isabelle (Jeanne Balibar) for young, twentysomething performance artist Laura (Julia Roy). But after Laura moves into Rey’s seaside Portuguese manor, everything goes south. Rey begins having second thoughts about his situation and pines for Isabelle, leading to a ridiculous self-willed suicide by motorcycle crash. At that point, Never Ever abruptly switches into supernatural haunted house mode, as Laura grapples with hallucinatory visions, none of which seem remotely shocking or, for that matter, believable. A convoluted psycho-thriller, this is not a necessary purchase. (M. Sandlin)