‘Hold Me Tight’ Review – Vicky Krieps Is Awesome In Well-Told But Boring Story

In week one of my school’s core class for the Film and Media Studies program, we discussed narrative structure. The screening for that week was The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007), precisely selected because of how it toys with the traditional structure we’d just learned about to create something my professor described as “distinctly cinematic.” The star of that film, Mathieu Amalric (who also served as Quantum of Solace’s villain supreme), is the visionary behind the similarly “cinematic” and narratively unique Hold Me Tight, which premieres in the US on September 9^th after its Cannes debut last year.

The film starts off as a woman (Vicky Krieps) leaves her family. There is no direct plot other than the mere passage of time, and the film charts the woman’s continued impact on her family, lurking as a shadow in their lives, and theirs on her. The film unfolds its narrative tricks by connecting short vignettes not by chronology but by the ways in which the lives of the woman and the family, especially her daughter Lucie, parallel each other. If the mother were to crash onto her bed in exhaustion, the film might cut to Lucie doing the same thing.

What is first disorienting about the film eventually fills it with emotion, dread, and heartbreak. Amalric makes you feel the holes in his characters’ lives caused by each other’s absences, creating an atmosphere that ends up defined by its feelings of sadness and loss. His technique is masterful and moving, complementing the plot’s swerves that pile up dizzyingly towards the end of the film.

An expertly told story, though, does not always make the story itself good. It would be lie to call the film captivating or riveting or some other intense adjective; it would be a lie to say I wasn’t bored. Its emotionally driven narrative is effective in evoking feeling, it is less effective in telling a story that isn’t, at times, downright confusing. Most of it makes sense by the end, but not all of it does, and the experience of watching it is occasionally unpleasant – the boredom and confusion may have made me stop watching halfway through. I’m glad I didn’t, but the journey to its even slightly satisfying end is difficult.

Thankfully, Krieps’ performance is an absolute slam dunk. She brings a sort of whimsy to her mysterious character, and her deep despair is punctuated by shallow joy. She’s unpredictable, fearless, and nothing short of extraordinary. She manages to be both a hollow shell of a woman removed from her family and a vibrant one finally freed from the responsibilities of it.

The rest of the family is also well acted, especially by Arieh Worthalter (who looks uncannily like a European Bradley Cooper) as the father. Worthalter skillfully navigates his character’s desperate clutches on masculinity hampered by his new responsibilities as a single parent who still yearns for (and sometimes hears the voice of) his missing partner. The child actors are, as the vast majority sadly are, a little annoying; thankfully, they don’t overwhelm the production and the two leads are able to deliver well-rounded and sharp performances.

Hold Me Tight feels like a pretty run-of-the-mill festival drama. Its narrative is a touch condescending in its lack of clarity, and my feelings of boredom were met with guilt or shame that I should really be enjoying this but I’m not because I’m not smart enough. Sadly, that feeling isn’t mitigated by some super compelling plot as in Nope, for example. Instead, I was slightly bored and very sad – never a stellar combination for any movie-watching experience.

Hold Me Tight will open in select theaters on Friday, September 9th with additional expansion to follow courtesy of Kino Lorber. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUp8FNdjywo]