Critics have been enjoined not to spoil Karma’s big plot twist, which basically means we’re not supposed to mention two-thirds of the film. Normally that would be a problem, but Karma’s initial set-up is so preposterous that everything which follows just gets more and more ridiculous. This is just an extremely silly movie, reliant on people acting in very silly ways. But mostly the experience of watching Karma is frustrating, because a much better and smarter movie was very nearly there. All it needed was a little thought about why traumatised people don’t always act in their own self-interest. But non. Hélas.
Jeanne (Marion Cotillard) is an Frenchwoman living in a Spanish fishing village. She has a godson she sees every day despite her obvious problem with alcohol, and despite her Argentinian boyfriend Daniel (Leonardo Sbaraglia doing his heroic best) not understanding why she spends so much time with this kid. Furthermore she doesn’t want a baby with him and has kept her life before they met a secret, though she does knows about Daniel’s own unfortunate past. Nobody guess what or why these things might be! Instead one day Jeanne passes out on a riverbank while minding the kid and when she wakes up he’s gone. Did she murder him? Did he fall into the river while she was unconscious? Has something even less likely happened? Does that something relate to the part Denis Ménochet plays which we’re not supposed to spoil? Or it this all because a ‘genetic archaeologist’ blabbed something for reasons we’re not supposed to hint at either? Regardless, are any of these deep traumas and unpleasant experiences good reasons not to call the cops? Who can say? Not the critics, anyway.
Director Guillaume Canet, who co-wrote the script with Simon Jacquet, was taking aim at organised religion, people who enable child abuse, and how adults don’t always act in children’s best interests. But they did this in the most sensationalist and silly ways possible, meaning they managed to miss all their targets and tell a lousy story to boot. Poor Ms Cotillard has to spend most of the film undergoing tons of pain and suffering before the thrills implied from a movie marketed as a thriller kick in, but by then it’s too little too late. Mr Ménochet does very dark work as a seemingly calm man whose authority barely conceals a festering, explosive rage, but this is nothing new. Sadly nothing here is anything new, except for the amount of time available to ponder why Jeanne spent so many years doing nothing to help the people who most needed her. Mr Canet and Ms Cotillard broke up shortly after filming and therefore probably won’t work together so much anymore, so the final shame is their final collaboration is such a damp squib. Its heart is in the right place, but for Karma that wasn’t nearly enough.
Karma recently played at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Cannes site for the title.
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