From the archives: "The Singer"

Hard to think of them this way, but Gérard Depardieu and Robert de Niro, the two male leads of Bertolucci's 1900, have been following similar career paths for some time now. Heavyweight roles have given way to increased offscreen activity (viticulture for the Frenchman, naturellement; restauranteering and film festivals for the New Yorker) that perhaps necessitated their participation in silly comedies, the banking of big cheques: for Rocky and Bullwinkle on one CV, read those live-action Asterix films on the other. Both actors seemed to have slipped into terminal self-parody, unable to take themselves, or their profession, seriously any more; you had only to watch one minute of de Niro's face-pulling in 2002's Showtime or Meet the Fockers, or of Depardieu's cameo as a jolly chef in last year's Queen Latifah vehicle Last Holiday to know that. But the latter, at least, appears to have some fight left in him.

After the premature claims of a major Depardieu comeback playing the antagonist in the Heat-inspired cop thriller 36, Xavier Giannoli's The Singer (a.k.a. Quand J'Etais Chanteur) is a valuable reminder of just what an immense screen presence the actor can be, if employed correctly. He's playing Alain Moreau, a lounge-bar singer, and one of the last avatars of his dying art form in an age of mobile DJs. (Moreau reacts to the mention of karaoke in precisely the same manner as any Frenchman would to a bottle of cheap plonk.) His latest in a long line of post-show conquests is Marion (Cécile de France), a young but uptight estate agent who's been left to bring up a young son alone. She, appalled at herself, and at the tackiness of falling into bed with a man at least twice her age, runs off the next day at breakfast, but soon the two are face-to-face once more when he starts looking at properties in her area.

Their conversations in empty apartments form the bulk of the film, with Moreau trying to turn something fleeting, temporary (a "for one night only" appearance, as it were) into greater permanence, and - in a funny sort of way - reconnect with a younger audience, and thus ensure his survival. It's a great role - the Vito Corleone or Tony Soprano of easy listening - and Depardieu is perfect casting, both as a man of charisma, around whom the world and its women turn, and as an artiste frittering away his talents for cash-in-hand participation: as he bemoans to his besotted PA, "I've become a singing machine" - much as, you suspect, a man as worldly and philosophical as Depardieu himself might have mused to his agent about acting at some point in the none-too-distant past.

Giannoli keeps finding new ways to prop up Depardieu, and his newly sad-sack frame, in striking, iconic poses. The opening shot finds Moreau smoking backstage in a dressing room with the most horrendous carpet ever seen on screen; elsewhere, we'll observe him framed against blank walls in unfurnished houses, slumped on the steps of a nightclub as dawn breaks, or in front of his home tanning light, his pet goat at his side. One of the most expressive shots in the film simply frames the actor's back and shoulders, after a female backing singer has informed him she'd warned herself against "settling" for somebody like him.

The other revelation here - though you'd have had to have sat through an awful lot of drippy French romcoms (or the remake of Around the World in Eighty Days) to appreciate it - is de France, shaking off the gamine in her as a young woman whose wounded eyes speak of a whole history of bad luck with the opposite sex. Moreau, ladies' man that he is, is at least sincere in everything he turns his hand to, his songs - pure fromage as they might be - a source of perennial comfort both to the singer (and you really have to hear Depardieu's surprisingly accomplished rendition of "Save the Last Dance for Me", as Moreau spies Marion dancing with a love rival) and his audience. Depardieu would be reason alone to catch The Singer; that de France gives as good as she gets, making this a relationship between two adults - and not between an older man and a young girl, as we see so often in films coming over the Channel - ensures Giannoli's film is a rare pleasure indeed.

(November 2007)

The Singer screens on BBC2 on Friday evening at 12.50am.