The Father Of My Children

Observational approaches to cinematic storytelling can easily shade into aloofness, as evidenced by Mia Hansen-Løve’s The Father Of My Children, a delicate slice of life that demonstrates too much remove. Louis-Do de Lencquesaing stars as a French movie producer trying to preserve his legacy by holding onto the rights to his back catalog, in spite of debts that may force him to sell it all off. The story follows his meetings with creditors, his squabbles with brilliant-but-stubborn filmmakers, and the family gatherings where he pretends everything’s fine. Where some directors might turn the details of everyday anxiety into audience-friendly dramedy, complete with punchlines and big beats, Hansen-Løve remains an intimate but non-judgmental observer of her characters, and doesn’t treat any one moment in her film with any special emphasis. It’s refreshing not to be led along or handled by a filmmaker, but given the almost-novelistic structure of The Father Of My Children—which juggles half a dozen or so major characters and follows their reaction to a crisis in obsessive detail—the movie could stand to be a little more dynamic.