‘Alice and Martin’ Deeply Explores the Ties That Bind

“Alice and Martin” is another of director Andre Techine’s quietly shattering depth charges probing complex relationships within families and between friends and lovers. It continues a remarkable Techine cycle that includes “Wild Reeds” and “Ma Saison Preferee.”

Boldly structured, intensely focused and briskly paced, “Alice and Martin” has a tremendous emotional density that places the utmost demands upon its actors--and asks a lot of audiences, too. The result is a film as provocative as it is gratifying.

It begins with a deceptive sunny casualness, sketching a warm relationship between a single mother, Jeanine (Carmen Maura), and her 10-year-old son Martin (Jeremy Kreikenmayer). Unfortunately for Martin, she has decided that it’s best to send her son, born out of wedlock, to live with his father, Victor (Pierre Maguelon). He’s a stern patriarch, a provincial upper bourgeois in his 60s whose home is a fine old manor house in the country.

Victor proves formidable, but his wife Lucie (Marthe Villalonga) accepts Martin in a matter-of-fact and not unkind way; he is not her husband’s only offspring outside marriage, but only Martin’s mother has been determined enough to see that Victor gives her son his name and makes Martin part of his family. Jeanine has sacrificed her son for what she believes will be in his own good, but Martin and Victor are at odds from the start.

These developments unfold with unsettling dispatch, capped by the announcement that 10 years have gone by. Preceded by some disturbing fragmented images and snatches of dialogue, we then see the 20-year-old Martin (Alexis Loret) running out of the house, eventually making his way to Paris, where he crashes with his closest half-brother, Benjamin (Mathieu Amalric), a struggling actor who shares a tiny apartment with Alice (Juliette Binoche), a dedicated violinist.

It is clear Martin has undergone some profoundly traumatic experience, but he responds to Benjamin’s loving concern and experiences a rush of attraction for the beautiful, poised Alice, somewhat older than he and infinitely more mature.

The good-looking Martin quickly breaks into high-fashion modeling. Caught up in the swirl of workaday Paris, Martin is on the verge of being happy. Alice resists Martin’s awkward overtures; she tells him she’s not attracted to “cute boys,” and besides, she has a warm, sustaining relationship with Benjamin, who is gay. She and Benjamin enjoy casual sex outside their relationship. Martin nevertheless persists, and Alice eventually succumbs.

All of this is essentially prologue, for when Martin’s troubled emotional past catches up with him the film shifts focus to Alice and her commitment to saving him, which means overcoming the hostility of his relatives, all of whom have their reasons for feeling about Martin as they do.

What emerges from all this highly charged interaction is a sense of paradox about how people with emotional or blood ties or both can be so sustaining of one another yet also so destructive. Alice exemplifies love at its most selfless, yet in Binoche’s exquisite portrayal she comes across, not as a noble martyr, but as a strong adult, clear-eyed and practical, who understands the commitment and responsibility that love entails.

Villalonga’s Lucie proves to be as staunch and forthright in her way as Alice. These two formidable actresses--Villalonga will be remembered as Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil’s doughty mother in “Ma Saison”--are well-complemented by Maura and by Loret, whose Martin remains sympathetic even when taxing, and Amalric, whose Benjamin is consistently the film’s most likable and buoyant presence.

Caroline Champetier’s camera work could scarcely be more expressive or supportive, flowing easily between scenes of intimacy and longer shots that convey a larger perspective. Techine’s “Alice and Martin” is at all times supple and assured, alternately bravura and understated in its movements and images. It is the work of a master filmmaker at the height of his powers.

* MPAA rating: R, for a scene of sexuality and language. Times guidelines: language, adult themes and situations.

‘Alice and Martin’

Juliette Binoche: Alice

Alexis Loret: Martin Sauvagnac

Mathieu Amalric: Benjamin Sauvagnac

Carmen Maura: Jeanine Sauvagnac

Marthe Villalonga: Lucie

An October Films release of an Alain Sarde presentation. Director Andre Techine. Producer Alain Sarde. Screenplay by Techine, Gilles Taurand with the collaboration of Olivier Assayas. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier. Editor Martine Giordano. Music Philippe Sarde. Costumes Elisabeth Tavernier. Production designer Ze Branco. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.

At selected theaters.