Taboo time: Valérie Donzelli's compelling look at brother/sister love, MARGUERITE & JULIEN

What an interesting career has had French filmmaker Valérie Donzelli. I first caught her work at the FSLC's Rendez-vous With French Cinema some years back, when her charming and psychologically very-smart rom-com, The Queen of Hearts made its New York debut. The next thing I saw from her was the even more compelling (but, for my money, not quite as successful Declaration of War). Now comes her most dangerous (and maybe her most interesting) movie, MARGUERITE & JULIEN, which tackles, in a riot of seemingly differing time frames, the still taboo topic of a brother-sister love that goes, yes, all the way.

Love has been central to all of Ms Donzelli's work (the filmmaker is shown at right). In her first, a young woman keeps falling for man after man, each of whom is played in charming disguise by the same actor, Donzelli's seemingly constant collaborator, Jérémie Elkaïm (below). In Declaration of War, that love is directed at the couple's child, who comes down with a brain tumor, and the pair does everything in its power to save the kid. Now, in her latest work, that love has gone big-time rogue. As opposed to her "War" film, in which you can do just about anything for love of your young child and audiences will cheer your every move, here her lovers go up against the entire society -- church, state, family and the bourgeoisie -- yet are determined to have what they want and need despite the costs.

We've seen incest themes previously, of course, but one thing that makes Donzelli's version different is her use of time period. As the end titles roll, we learn that the film is based on an actual pair of lovers from the 1600s. And indeed, the movie, costume- and set-wise, appears to begins in perhaps the 1800s. But then, as it moves along, we find ourselves watching automobiles andclothes from the 1930 and 1950s, and finally modern-day helicopters chase our pair of lovers across the terrain.

All this is done so fleetingly and off-handedly, however, that it doesn't knock us in the teeth. And, yes, it adds to the film a subtle but timeless quality while simultan-eously making us understand how little has changed regarding this subject over the centuries. And I don't believe that Donzelli is waving her own kind of pro-incest rainbow flag. She makes certain we see and understand the bill to be paid for trespassing.

What does keep us and the movie centered are the two lead performances from M. Elkaïm and Anaïs Demoustier (above, and most recently of Bird People and The New Girlfriend), who plays his sister/lover. The two are strong performers under most circumstances; here, their strength is especially necessary. Elkaïm broods with the best of the French actors, while Demoustier uses her quiet demeanor and plainspoken strength as a force to finally be reckoned with.

Has brother/sister sexual desire have more to do with our DNA than we've so far been told? Is it somehow a product of lax parenting? A psychological defect? Or maybe something that someday society may be better able to comprehend and deal with? I don't know, and neither, it seems, does Donzelli. But she has given us a movie that, about as amour fou as it gets, simply shows us that it continues to exist -- strangely and powerfully. From IFC Films, after a very limited theatrical release, the movie makes its DVDebut this Tuesday, July 12 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Valérie Donzelli's and Jérémie Elkaïm's DECLARATION OF WAR -- France's submission for "Oscar" bait -- opens

How odd -- and a little unsettling -- to have found nearly irresistible the first feature film by up-and-coming French movie-maker Valérie Donzelli (that was The Queen of Hearts [La reine des pommes] shown at last year's Rendez-vous With French Cinema--my review is here; click and scroll down) and now to find myself so heavily resisting her second feature work, DECLARATION OF WAR, a film that proved much more popular than her first in her native France. (So popular in fact, that it became France's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film, though it made neither the final nominations nor even the short list).

Since first viewing Declaration of War a couple of months back, I've been asking myself why I could so easily resist it, and I think I understand at least some of the reasons. Fortunately (or maybe not), most viewers will not be in my shoes, for they will not have had the opportunity to see The Queen of Hearts. (Though I hope they do, as it is delightful and original.) Ms Donizelli's style (the filmmaker is shown above) in both movies -- hectic, quirky and extremely self-involved -- is quite unusual, and I found this worked exceptionally well for the first film (a rom-com with enormous psychological smarts) and much less so in this new film, which details a pair of young parents whose child develops a life-threatening illness.

Donizelli and Jérémie Elkaïm (above, right, who co-wrote and co-stars in the film) -- are (or were) real-life partners who, we are told, went through an experience quite similar to the parents in the film. Initially Donzelli locks you into things via fast pacing and plenty of incident. I wonder, though, if the couple could have been quite so frenetic and ever on-the-move.

From the super-cute names the pair give themselves (he's Romeo and she's, you got it) to the soundtrack that never shuts up to the super-energetic non-stop movement of the actors and editing, the movie soon begin to seem a little -- no, a lot -- overboard and cute. Eventually, I swear, it could further curdle your buttermilk.

The filmmakers are quite right in their insistence that the movie be about the parents. It is their responsibility, after all, to see that their child survives. The kid himself, at his young age, can do little more than look sweet and get our sympathy. Yet I think Donzelli and Elkaïm mis-step by concentrating so thoroughly and heavily on themselves and their quirks. After a time, they seem to be, above all, prime narcissists.

The two leads are certainly up to snuff with their energy, and their supporting cast  -- which includes some fine French actors like Frédéric Pierrot, Anne Le Ny, Brigitte Sy and Elina Löwensohn (the latter's actually Romanian) -- does a great job with barely sketched-in roles.

Voice-over, slow-motion, a musical number and more -- Donizelli has packed it all in, and while some of this indeed works, it is finally too much. For me, anyway. You might have quite a different opinion. And since, at this point, I don't know that America will ever get to view The Queen of Hearts, I hope you do see Declaration of War. At the very least Donizelli's style, I think, is sure to seem unique.

The film, from Sundance Selects, opens this Friday, January 27, in New York (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the IFC Center), San Francisco (good luck trying to search the web for the specific theater!) and Los Angeles (at Landmark's Nuart Theatre) -- followed by a national rollout beginning on Friday, February 3, which also marks the day the film will be available nationwide via Video On Demand.