Sibyl (2019)

Directed by: Justine Triet | 100 minutes | drama | Actors: Virginie Efira, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Gaspard Ulliel, Sandra Hüller, Laure Calamy, Niels Schneider, Paul Hamy, Arthur Harari, Adrien Bellemare, Jeane Arra-Bellanger, Liv Harari, Lorenzo Lefèbvre, Aurélien Bellanger, Philipjonèquère, Henriette Desnès Tassel, Judith Zins, Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini, Natascha Wiese, Fabrizio Mosca, Etienne Beurier, Frank Williams

‘The best Belgian actress you probably don’t know’, is how the Flemish newspaper De Standaard described actress Virginie Efira following the premiere of the film ‘Sibyl’ (2019) at the Cannes Film Festival. Born in 1977 in Schaerbeek (near Brussels) in Belgium, Efira has made a steady career in French cinema in recent years – in 2016 she was naturalized as a Frenchwoman – and although she is not yet close to the level of an Isabelle Huppert or Catherine Deneuve, she knows how to captivate the French public with her versatility. Initially she mainly starred in romantic comedies, but she is starting to broaden her horizons. For her roles in ‘Victoria’ (2016), ‘Le grand bain’ (2018) and ‘Un amour impossible’ (also 2018, which was an excellent year for her!) she was nominated for a César, the French equivalent of the Oscars and also with her supporting role in Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Elle’ (2016) she attracted attention, which is no mean feat in Huppert’s shadow.

In ‘Sibyl’ (2019), Efira again collaborates with director Justine Triet, a contemporary with whom she made the so successful ‘Victoria’. She plays the title character Sibyl, a woman who apparently has it all together. She works as a psychotherapist, has a relationship with the trusty Etienne (Paul Hamy) and is the loving mother of two children. But beneath that apparently peaceful life hides a lot of unrest, frustrations and unfulfilled desires. The film opens with Sibyl’s announcement that she is leaving her career as a therapist and wants to pick up her old ambitions as a novelist. She only keeps a handful of clients and when the young actress Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos (‘La vie d’Adèle’ (2013))) comes to see her, she becomes intrigued. She turns out to be pregnant by her co-star Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), but who is already married to Mika (Sandra Hüller), the director of the film they both star in. Sibyl finds the worries of the desperate Margot so fascinating that she decides to record the therapy sessions and incorporate her story into the novel she is trying to write. Not exactly opt for a psychotherapist, but as said Sibyl herself also has quite a bit of unprocessed drama, which is now all being brought up again.

If it all sounds a bit ‘soapy’ to you, then you may be right. A can of melodrama is opened from have-I-you-there. For example, the difficult relationship between Sibyl and her now deceased mother is completely out of the picture. The laundry list on the sidelines in the screenplay by Triet and Arthur Harari distracts greatly from the central story, the confrontation that Sibyl enters into with the demons from her past. That lack of focus makes the film messy, chaotic and overcrowded. ‘Sibyl’ is also changeable in tone; On the one hand, we have the hilarious Hüller (known from ‘Toni Erdmann’ (2016)), who makes fun of the arthouse director who takes himself extremely seriously, full of passion and stubbornness, on the other hand Sibyl regularly wallows in self-pity about her lost love for Gabriel (Niels Schneider , in real life also Efira’s partner). In the convincing play of Efira, Exarchopoulos and Hüller, we are prepared to go along with all those absurd twists, triangles and role reversals – to a certain extent, and the way in which the monumental and mysterious volcano Stromboli – which has often played the leading role in films – is woven into the film deserves all praise and shows respect for film history.

‘Sibyl’ blows across the canvas like a whirlwind, with dizzying intrigue and a maze of needless asides and plot ramifications. It is sometimes difficult to keep your head up, because the developments are sometimes too fleeting, sometimes too much and sometimes simply not interesting enough. You really have to be in the mood for a movie like this. But because Triet has incorporated Roy Orbison’s ‘Sharadoba’ in her film, much has been forgiven her!