‘The Electric Kiss’ Review: Cannes Opens on Low-Voltage Note

When you see the names of two such accomplished writer-directors as Rebecca Zlotowski and Robin Campillo credited with the original idea for a film as moribund as Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss (La Vénus électrique), it’s inevitable to wonder if the material might have worked in other hands. Based on what’s onscreen, that seems unlikely. A French period romantic comedy-drama about a widowed young painter and the charlatan psychic pretending to channel his late wife, this is bland, middlebrow entertainment strictly for domestic consumption, an underwhelming choice to open Cannes.

Salvadori was last on the Croisette in 2018 with the far jauntier screwball crime romance The Trouble With You, one of many reasons to regret the decision of gifted actor Adèle Haenel to quit the film industry. That Directors’ Fortnight entry slightly overloaded on farcical complications but breezed along on the script’s daffy humor, its underlying sweetness and the director’s pleasingly light touch. It’s a fizzy watch that goes down easily.

Working with the same co-writers, Benjamin Charbit and Benoît Graffin, Salvadori struggles to breathe life into The Electric Kiss, a film whose air of strained whimsy falls flat. That aspect is fed by the principal setting of a carnival in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris in 1928, full of bizarre sideshow acts selling bogus spectacle. And while it’s no fault of charming lead actress Anaïs Demoustier, her pixie-ish Audrey Tautou quality contributes to an unfortunate Amelie adjacency that does the new film no favors.

Demoustier plays Suzanne, an exotic attraction who risks electrocution several times a day to make sparks fly when volunteer smoochers from the audience pucker up. She’s underpaid and exploited by Titus (Gustave Kervern), the surly slob running “The Electrified Venus,” who made a deal to take Suzanne off her father’s hands when she was 15. 

Preferring her own company to that of the other carnies, including her dopey friend Camille (Madeleine Baudot), she listens in on the fraudulent seances of the neighboring medium while smoking under the caravan. She’s poking around in there one night, eyeing a bottle of laudanum like it’s Chekhov’s gun, when after-hours customer Antoine (Pio Marmaï) bursts in desperate to contact his late wife, Irene. He refuses to take no for an answer and Suzanne can’t say no to the money, so she passes herself off as “Madame Claudia,” improvising convincingly enough for Antoine to book a private session the next day at his home.

Since Irene’s death, Antoine, miserable and pickled in booze, has rattled around in their Paris villa nestled in a leafy garden, with an art studio gathering dust. With sleight of hand and a pair of milky opaque contacts, Suzanne again successfully summons the man’s dead wife, so much so that he’s inspired to resume painting for the first time since her passing. 

When Antoine’s art dealer, Armand (Gilles Lellouche), catches on to Suzanne’s deception, he chases her off, threatening to call the cops if she returns. But he quickly reconsiders, striking a deal to split the proceeds if she can maintain the ruse and keep Antoine busy at the easel. Armand provides background information to help further the illusion.

Following Suzanne’s discovery of Irene’s diaries, the narrative takes a bifurcated turn as it retraces the early stages of Irene (Vimala Pons) and Antoine’s relationship some years earlier. 

Working as an artists’ model while figuring out how to escape the poverty of her upbringing, Irene is a self-possessed pragmatist. She sees a possible stepping-stone toward financial security when she spots Antoine’s undiscovered talent and convinces Armand to represent him. But complications ensue as a romantic triangle forms, echoed in both timelines, and Suzanne begins to have genuine feelings for Antoine, an innocent wracked with misplaced guilt over his wife’s death.

The problem is that the twin plotlines don’t hold together structurally. While the romance, the deception, the surprise discoveries, the attempted suicides (genuine or fake) and the burlesque comedy should be gathering steam, it all becomes a tedious muddle. 

The movie unfolds in a space between playful fantasy — an aspect fueled by both the colorful 1920s carnival setting and the enchanted-looking garden around Antoine’s house — and dramatic reality. But it doesn’t occupy either dimension with enough imagination to create much intrigue or engender much affection for the characters. The actors are all likeable enough, especially the gamine Demoustier, but they are stuck with limp material that’s more twee than captivating.