Americano

Any film that couples the son of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda with the daughter of Catherine Deneuve (Demy’s muse) and Marcello Mastroianni (Deneuve’s co-star in a Demy film) has to be intriguing. And for a while the first film written and directed by the former looks as if it may be going interesting places, as Martin – the now grown–up character from a movie Varda made in LA in 1981– heads back to that city to take care of the estate of his recently deceased, very estranged mother, and becomes involved in a search for a woman called Lola (Hayek). Echoes of ‘Model Shop’, then, but the film plunges off the rails when Martin tracks her to a seedy dive in Tijuana: cue clichés galore leavened by odd moments of lyricism and engaging cinephile wit (the music from ‘Rio Bravo’ used unexpectedly).  Disappointing.