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Sibyl
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I came to this backwards in Justine Triet’s career, after seeing Anatomy of a Fall (2023). That film – which triggered the inevitable, draining, fatally inconclusive arguments about the slickness (phoniness?) of art-movies dabbling in popular genre modes – had, at the very least, a solid construction, a sureness of tone and the ‘icebox effect’ for which all filmmakers long: spectators of all kinds tossed around its ambiguities and undertones until, approximately, the end of 2023. Sibyl, for its part, juggles a few too many balls in the air. There’s a psychoanalyst (Virginie Efira as Sibyl) who was previously a writer, and who, in the story’s present tense, closes up (most of) her therapeutic practice in order to return to literature. But before becoming a writer, it seems also that she was an aspiring singer! Plus (a big plus): she is an alcoholic, on and off the wagon (and in and out of AA). And she has a child from her time with a now-lost love, Gabriel (Niels Schneider), whose memory haunts her – both in mental-image flashes, and biologically in the face of their kid (these shots are among the best bits of the film). A kid who is mirrored in another kid, a taciturn patient who is determined to stick to the strict ‘rules’ of the psycho-therapeutic exchange. Rules that Sibyl herself, in all areas of her life, will mostly ignore! The diverse stages and phases of Sybil’s life – the facets of her splintered personality/psyche – get refracted by Triet and co-writer/partner Arthur Harari (who also appears as Sibyl’s fairly alarmed psy-friend-counsellor) through involvement with a troubled, indeed suicidal actor, Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos) – whose life Sibyl secretly mines for her novel-in-progress. Which introduces the next set of balls-in-the-air: Margot is pregnant because of her affair with fellow actor, Igor (Gaspard Ulliel) – an affair which rages during the shoot (on the volcanic island of Stromboli, no less!) of a film directed by Igor’s current partner, Mika (Sandra Hüller). Suddenly Sibyl is present on set as the ‘psychological counsellor’ for the actors – an echo here of Marco Bellocchio’s infamous (yet extremely productive!) collaboration with his analyst, Massimo Fagioli, since Sibyl even briefly replaces Mika as director – and there’s also a frisson happening between her and the vacuous-but-attractive Igor … The film could have lingered in Stromboli and drawn out the trashy thriller/moral suspense delicacies of the four-way intrigue slower and better (Triet avows that she regretted not having more time to shoot there). But there’s so much other ground to cover! Past, present, family, career(s), encounters, crises … and even a ‘9 months later’ ellipse of the type that post-Pialat French cinema loves. Triet professes that the “quite banal” plot premise is, for her, the least interesting part of the adventure … but she still requires an awesomely taxing amount of narrative architecture (juiced by a quasi-Resnais/Roeg montage style that is “extremely rare in contemporary cinema”, according to Stéphane du Mesnildot’s Cahiers review) to support it. The result is an intriguing film with strong moments and arresting elements, but little cohesion. Sybil, as a prismatic character, crosses every line and falls down every looming ravine. “To demolish a shrink, to throw her into the abyss is always interesting”, comments Triet in her Cahiers du cinéma interview (Cannes issue, no. 755, May 2019) – “just like with every profession and institution”. Apart from the reference to Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950) – and hence, through that, to Godard’s Contempt (1963) – and the promotional genuflection to Persona (1966) in the advertising for the film, it’s more than clear that Triet’s main debt is to older-meets-younger-woman dramas of Woody Allen’s Another Woman (1988) and especially John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977). It’s no accident that Efira, like Gena Rowlands, is what the Cahiers interviewer (Jean-Philippe Tessé) bluntly describes as a “pretty blonde”! Nor that Triet & Harari borrow a real-life anecdote from Cassavetes about his amazement on casually discovering, after so many years, that his wife/star could play the piano. Sibyl gets generically tagged (in all the usual go-to places) as a comedy-drama. Beware of this label! How any filmmaker handles the mix or balance of comedic and dramatic elements – how they distribute the signs or markers of either orientation throughout the work – is no easy or simple matter. This film begins (in one of those revolving-option restaurants) with a slight décalage registered between a fast-talking friend-manager figure (never seen again, only heard on the end of a phone) who lectures Sybil on how to write a ‘catchy’ book these days, and her deadpan, monosyllabic responses. So: he’s comedy, while she emits the first hint of seriousness. And the casting – rather than the mise en scène or even the script – tends to carry the brunt of this ongoing process of comedy-or-drama sorting/classifying throughout. Laure Calamy from the TV series Call My Agent! as Édith (Sibyl’s sister) is pure comedy (even when she gets an angry or teary scene to play). Exarchopoulos, on the other hand, is all heavy drama – a Bergmanian pit, almost. Efira plays it as straight as possible, even in comic-catastrophic comical scenes (like her demolition of the after-party for the Stromboli film), while Hüller manages (it’s her special gift as a performer since Toni Erdmann [2016]) to project both screwball histrionics (especially for Mika’s directorial meltdown during a steamy love scene) and entirely relatable world-weariness and desperation, all usually within the same monologue or gesture. © Adrian Martin 10 February 2026 |
