Driving Madeleine

A cab ride takes us across Paris and into the past in Christian Carion’s moving drama that will, by journey’s end, have motored its way to your heart and, most likely, your tearducts.

Charles (Dany Boon) is a stressed-out cabbie who is two points away from losing his licence when he is offered a bumper fare to drive a passenger from one side of the city to the other. His pick-up is Madeleine (veteran star Line Renaud) and the lingering glance Carion shows her giving her house is enough for us to know that this is a one-way trip. Madeleine is 92 and enjoyably curmudgeonly as she gets into Charles’ cab, but it’s not long before she’s regaling him with the tale of how she met the American GI who, through a brief liaison, became the father of her son Mathieu (played as a youngster by Hadriel Roure and then Thomas Alden).

The encounter is shown in a honeyed flashback - where she is played by Alice Isaaz - that aims for emotion rather than narrative and paves the way for further trips back in time with Madeleine’s memories - although not all of them are as joyful as this first encounter. As the cab ride progresses, the pair make an increasing number of stop offs, which means Paris is showcased in a more detailed way than the usual tourist highlights. The journey also proves to be less wistful than it might first appear as Madeleine starts to outline a further relationship that was by no means as sweet. It is also an early example of the current trend for featuring Francophone prejudicial court cases against women, which has continued with the likes of Saint Omer, Anatomy Of A Fall and Through The Night.

Largely a two-hander, the film rests on the twin performances of Boon and Renaud, who have starred together previously in films including Family Is Family (La Ch'tite famille), and bat the dialogue back and forth with skill. The script, co-written by Cyril Gely, has little time for sentiment and strikes a surprisingly brutal note in one or two places, which helps the story from stumbling into fairy-tale cuteness. This balancing act between nostalgia and something a lot less wholesome is mirrored by Carion, who like Charles appears to be “a huge romantic, who hides it well”. The music, too, vacillates between traditional modern scoring and a bluesy needle drops by the likes of Dinah Washington. The colour blue is also dominant in the colour palette, which not only looks great on Renaud but also provides a subliminal connection between the modern day and the past.

The destination of the film might feel like a bit of a foregone conclusion but the graceful and sometimes unpredictable manner in which Carion arrives at it is impressive. We feel the connection between these two unlikely new friends and, by extension, also feel connected to them and their stories. All cab rides should come with a tip and mine is - pack tissues.