Ricky (Tuesday, December 22, 2009) (204)

Francois Ozon is one of France's most interesting contemporary directors. Some of his recent films, Under the Sand and Swimming Pool, are very well crafted, if not always totally successful. In Ricky, he takes his beautiful narrative style and joins it with fantasy elements. Unfortunately this hybrid does not work well, and leaves us getting two separate half movies with no good synthesis or complete story.

In the film, Katie is a single middle-class woman who works in a factory in the middle of France. One day, Paco, a Spanish manager visits the assembly line where she works and the two immediately have sex in the bathroom. Paco moves in to the small apartment where Katie and her young daughter live. They get married and she gives birth to a baby, Ricky. A few weeks after the baby is born, they find out that he has wings growing off his shoulder blades. The small family is set upon by tabloids making their lives miserable.

The basic middle-class drama part of the film is actually very good and compelling. Katie, played by Alexandra Lamy, is a sympathetic woman who is stuck in a rather rotten, dull life. The lack of options she has and the general malaise is written all over her face. Her affair with Paco comes off as an understandable diversion. Her young daughter's worry about Paco being flaky and untrustworthy is also well-founded and believable. There is a beauty in the brutal realism to these scenes - and is very reminiscent of the frank style of the Dardenne brothers.

The fantasy and flying-baby part of the film, however, is not only silly, but also seems totally separate and under-examined. It feels totally arbitrary that the baby has wings and, aside from the light commentary that the vulture-like press would ruin the family's privacy, there is no commentary on why this happens or why it means. It is so elliptical that it could be in a totally separate film. Does the boy grow wings because of some sin committed by his mother? Is it a commentary on our modern culture? Is he supposed to be an angel (because he doesn't seem like one and that thread is never really pulled)? None of these questions are raised, examined or answered.

This is a very small movie and not really worth the effort to watch. I wish it had continued on as an examination of middle-class ennui with out the fantasy storyline - but I guess that would have been a different film entirely. At least such a story might have been more interesting and complete.

Stars: 1.5 of 4 stars