May 28, 1993 | By turns darkly comical, unsettlingly spooky and provocatively puzzling — and, sometimes, all three at once — Olivier, Olivier is a dysfunctional fairy tale about extraordinary events in ordinary lives.
Although loosely based on a real incident, it is an imaginative work of fiction: a mystery that remains mysterious even after its secrets are revealed, a tragedy that turns perversely joyous as it plumbs the full depths of its despair.
It is, in short, a fully functioning contradiction, and one of the very best movies around now.
Written and directed by Agnieszka Holland, the immensely gifted Polish-born filmmaker who gave us the Oscar-nominated Angry Harvest and Europa, Europa, Olivier is set in a quiet corner of the French countryside, not far from Paris. Olivier Duval (Emmanuel Morozof) is a spoiled little tyke who claims exclusive rights to the affections of his mother (Brigitte Rouan). This annoys his father (Francois Cluzet), a quick-tempered, weak-willed veterinarian. But Nadine (Faye Gatteau), Olivier’s slightly older sister, isn’t jealous — she, too, is fond of her brother. She is angry only when Olivier borrows her bicycle without asking.
Which is exactly what Olivier does one fateful afternoon. Just like Little Red Riding Hood, he goes off to deliver a lunch basket to his ailing grandmother.
And then he disappears.
Despite the efforts of search parties and police detectives, Olivier cannot be found. His father, unable to cope, accepts a job in Africa. He offers to take his wife and daughter with him, but they remain behind. Mom wants to maintain a vigil for her missing son. Nadine wants to protect her mother.
That’s how they live until, six years later, a police detective who once searched for the boy finds a smart-mouthed hustler (Gregoire Colin) who might be the long-missing Olivier. Is he? Olivier’s mother immediately accepts him as such, and his father returns home for a happy reunion. But the grown-up Nadine (Marina Golovine) is skeptical. Perhaps with good reason.
In the manner of someone peeling an onion, Holland methodically strips away layers of deceptions and delusions, revealing hidden furies and untapped passions. Nadine resents the return of her father — and, even if he really is who he claims, Olivier — because she has grown accustomed to ruling the household with a whim of iron. Anxious not to trouble her mother with angry outbursts, Nadine managed a long time ago to channel her rage into a unique outlet. Call it telekinesis, and you won’t be far off the mark.
Mom is ecstatic over the return of her son, and prevents anyone from asking questions only the real Olivier could answer. Olivier could be the genuine article, or he could be a con artist. Either way, she warns that, if he leaves again, she will kill herself. If he stays, maybe she and her errant husband will keep their marriage, and their lives, intact.
And Olivier? Judging from his enigmatic smile, he genuinely enjoys being part of a family — even a troubled family.
Olivier, Olivier can be read as an ingenious metaphor for all the ways people repress and deny their true natures while attaining the ideal of a nuclear family. But don’t let that keep you from savoring it on a more literal level, as a skillfully acted and seductively complex mystery from a filmmaker working at the very top of her form.
