Don Juan

In his fifth feature, Serge Bozon explores an infrequent terrain for contemporary cinema—musical comedy. Laurent is an actor who’s performing in a theater version of Molière’s Don Juan as he’s left by Julie, the woman he was about to marry. Obsessed, he sees Julie in every woman that crosses his path. From that premise, Bozon builds a film that is gentle only in appearance—its interstices hide layers of sadness and darkness. Laurent’s duplicity, Don Juan on stage and in real life, paves the way for some questions about the performing arts—to what extent can what one is imitate what they become as an artist? Bozon’s film disguises those complexities through a dialectics of surprise, alternating a direct narrative with emotional outbursts typical of musicals.