On My Way

A road trip takes a middle-aged restaurateur from a state of disenchantment to one of prospective happiness in Emmanuelle Bercot's loosely structured, sporadically engaging On My Way, which primarily serves as a star vehicle for French screen icon Catherine Deneuve, but also features some fine supporting turns, particularly from the director's young son, Nemo Schiffman. Deneuve plays Bettie, a former beauty queen who finds her life unraveling: her restaurant is on the brink of bankruptcy, and her long affair collapses when a married man dumps her for a younger mistress. Feeling trapped, Bettie spontaneously jumps in the car and drives off with no destination in mind. That marks the beginning of an adventurous journey that will lead to a drunken party at a bar and a one-night stand with a roguish young man before Bettie receives a pleading phone call from her long-estranged daughter asking her to take the latter's 11-year-old son (Schiffman) to his grandfather's. The inevitable bonding between Bettie and the boy on a drive lasting several hundred miles to granddad's farm is punctuated by a side-trip to a reunion of the 1969 beauty contest competitors. The success of On My Way depends heavily on Deneuve's still-luminous presence, but ultimately truly works because of the chemistry between her and Schiffman (a winning scene-stealer). Recommended. (F. Swietek)