Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I'm Going Home (original French title Je rentre à la maison) is a studied art film about an aging actor named Gilbert Valance played by the great Michel Piccoli. It's composed of only a few slow and scenes that stay fairly remote from the actors and action, which can be frustrating and distracting.

Built into the proceedings are long and static passages from the actor's stage work, an Ionescu play, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a long and fruitless attempt at playing a younger man for a film version of James Joyce's Ulysses. All of the excerpts are about age and aging, keeping the themes of the film always on the surface.

Valance's life is destroyed by family at the beginning, but none of the consequences are played out. We basically see him engaged in activities like going to read the paper at his local bar, playing with his orphaned grandson, buying a new pair of shoes. All of these scenes are remote, usually in one take, and frankly take a long time to tell us very little. Yes, the slow rhythm might be meant to represent old age, but that's not how the film plays.

In the only active plot thread, Valance avoids his agent's attempts to con him into doing commercial TV work. This eventually leads him to take the Ulysses assignment. It's more appropriate role, but Gilbert is dismayed to discover that he can't keep up the energy of a supposedly younger man, while remembering his lines at the same time. He's tired, and has lost his ability to leap into new material.

Director Manoel de Oliveira is a respected talent still going strong at 94 years, but I'm Going Home seems a short film padded to feature length. Scenes are held on interminably, and lack a point of view. Much of the film is shot in identical long-lens mastershots from far away, which is surely Oliviera's intention, but all the literal endistancing allows us only an intellectual contact with his story. Enticingly billed Catherine Deneuve, as an actress, and John Malkovich are barely in the picture, and play roles of little consequence.

The movie also looks cheap. Both visits to Gilbert's agent's office are almost entirely the same dull wide angle view. The theatrical shows are also one-shot, can't-miss wide masters. The camera viewpoint changes very infrequently, with one rehearsal of Gilbert's Ulysses scene played over an unbroken and not very rewarding closeup of the stage director played by John Malkovich. The show isn't very cinematic in any sense of the word, and the director's 'purity of vision' doesn't result in anything we'd care to see again.

Critics loved this picture, and the rave quotes that enticed me to check it out indicate that either they are more sensitive than I to the inner life of Oliviera's aged protagonist, or that I'm Going Home pushed all the right buttons for serious cinema, circa 2002. Every review I've seen makes a big mention of the significance of Gilbert Valance carefully purchasing a pair of fancy shoes, only to have them stolen by a mugger the same night. I'm not asking the show to be a bourgeois drama, where all such meanings are sublimated in the conventional trappings of entertainment, but I can surely see when a concept stripped bare, is a tough 83 minutes to slug through.

Milestone and Image's DVD of I'm Going Home is an okay transfer given a flat 1:66-matted transfer. Colors aren't bad, and the encoding is adequate, but cinematography that looks as if it originated clear and sparkling, is a little dull. An academic commentary is offered by Richard Peña of Columbia University and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. An interview with director Manuel de Oliviera will be a magnet for students of cinema. He talks exceedingly slowly, in French and Portuguese.