Now We're Alive

As if on a mission to make French New Wavers like Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer's postmodern conceits look unpretentious by comparison, millennial director Thibault Arbre concocts an undramatic, humorless, and dreamy film that is set in a silly future world where young men must choose a female life partner by the sound of her voice. Handsome, angst-ridden 25-year-old Tom (Charles Lemaire) finds himself blindfolded in a room surrounded by women, judging their nuptial worth purely by auditory means. After this disconcerting and confusing event, he has 30 days to seek out his choice and marry her. After combing the streets every day for a month, Tom comes home one day to a surprise party: it turns out that—according to the rules (made by whom, one might reasonably ask)—if there is no success after 30 days, Tom's “voice” has to come to him. All would be well, except that Lea (Laure Haulet), his supposed bride to be, doesn't have the voice Tom heard. The rest of the film becomes a repetitive truth vs. illusion intellectual exercise about Tom's growing obsession with the “voice” he thought would be his. Now We're Alive boasts a high-concept storyline that might have worked had there been any attention paid to the everyday humanity of the characters. Not a necessary purchase. (M. Sandlin)