In CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY, time-honoured badboy and reputable polemicist Peter Doherty takes on the role of Octave, a 19th century version of his faltering and outré self. As Sylvie Verheyde’s period drama unfolds, one sees this hedonistic libertine “stricken by the disease of the century”, his heart set on decadence, enduring fleeting love and despair, and garbling his way through oft-unintelligible voiceovers. Veering from baleful outpours to winsome enthusiasm, there’s room for pleasing pretention, but in truth, he delivers a performance at points mushy and groggy, like some sort of second-rate bratwurst.
This adaptation of de Musset’s romantic novel makes for an adaptation of two halfs: passionate, then passionless. The opening five minutes yield an elongated kiss scene, broken up by shots of his wife Elise (Lily Cole) playing footsy with another man, the ensuing duel and their arguments about fidelity. We’re gripped as he despairs like one of the many victims of Zola’s Nana: “to lose her was to destroy all”; how can he love another woman? There is also something enjoyable about the acts of pre-revolution philosophising and moralising on the odious bourgeoisie, and the debauched scenes of dining, vomming and volupté which follow. But suddenly, his father dies, and “the greatest libertine in all of Paris” decides to change his ways. He ponders society and solitude, good and evil, and past and present.
… weedy, claustrophobic and – in all honesty – rather mind-numbing …
So far so good, and it’s only when he bumps into the decade-older Brigitte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) that the film slowly begins to deteriorate. Gainsbourg is an incredible actress, we know this much, and Doherty isn’t bad himself, but there’s a distinct lack of chemistry and, in its place, an overwhelming abundance of acting-school amateurism as they fall in love very, very slowly. They do elope in the end, but by this time, the narrative too has become weedy, claustrophobic and – in all honesty – rather mind-numbing. There’s a glimmer of hope in the role reversal which sees Brigitte become the one sans but, but the denouement is predictably gloomy; the repeated “I’m leaving you”s are entirely superfluous. There’s the odd effective scene – Doherty breaking a pillow, Doherty hallucinating sex with other women and Doherty faking his own suicide – but these only add to the shame that this film has ended up so middlebrow after what seemed like such a promising premise.
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