Ne touchez pas la hache

Don’t Touch the Axe is a fairly slow movie of a very stoic general who falls in love with a duchess and ultimately vice versa. The story plays as a costume drama full of meaningful glances and rebuffed advances. Ultimately the mismatched timing, first one being forward while the other is being reticent and vice versa becomes tiresome and by the end it is hard to really care about the ultimate consequences of their monumental, but unsurprising failure to communicate.

Guillaume Depardieu is good as the general, and looks a lot like his father. Jeanne Balibar is very pretty and easy to watch. Both give flawless, if very restrained performances.

2007 Toronto International Film Festival