Suppose that you’re in mid-life, mid-career and mid-relationship, and your ex-spouse – whom you have thought dead for a decade – suddenly shows up. In Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, that is exactly what happens to a filmmaker (Mathieu Amalric) when his long-disappeared ex (Marion Cotillard) pops in. So far, so good. But then Ismael’s Ghosts begins to slide off the rails.
The filmmaker accompanies his ex-father-in-law, who is being honored in Israel, but then the story becomes unhinged and, finally, impossible to follow. It’s just one indecipherable mess.
I was actually looking forward to this movie. I loved Desplechin’s My Golden Days, and I admire Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who plays the filmmaker’s current partner). But Ismael’s Ghosts is just a waste of their talent and my time. I saw Ismael’s Ghosts at Cinequest before its US theatrical release.