A taxi ride that’s well worth your time.
“Driving Madeleine” is obviously a French modern day version of “Driving Miss Daisy but without a black driver. Actually, this driver is two points away from losing his license. His name is Charles, he’s played by Dany Boon, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to spark a conversation with based on his disposition. But if you’re optimistic and friendly enough to talk to him, you might get to know him better. His latest passenger Madeleine Keller (Line Renaud) is that person, who has all the time in the world to tell him her story. At least that’s what she likes to say since she’s in no hurry to go to her retirement home, which is on the other side of Paris.
The old lady looks 80, but she’s really 92, who is lucky enough to remember the love and struggles within her youth. At that age, she was played by Alice Isaaz, whom you may remember as the crazy girlfriend in “Elle.” And her story is much more than meets the eye. Even I wasn’t expecting what happened in her life.
While stopping at places she has emotional attachments to, she tells him stories of how she fell in love with an American solider during WWII and had a son named Matthieu (Hadriel Roure) as a result, while he returns to his country, unaware of his conception. Then we jump to the 1950s, when she also marries another man named Ray (Jérémie Laheurte), who turns out to be an abusive, chauvinistic, rapist drunk. Back then, you couldn’t divorce for domestic violence nor could you open a bank account or get a job without your husband’s consent.
I don’t want to spoil the whole story, but she’s forced to deal with the additional pathos in her life. To quote Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” When Charles says those times sounded terrible, she assures him there were good times during that period. “Take the bad with the good,” you could say.
I don’t want to make my review on “Driving Madeleine” about life quotes; I just want to make a point of how I experienced this movie. I hate depictions on how men think they have more power than women, especially when we get to a certain point in Madeleine’s story. But I also admire how writer/director Christian Carion (“Joyeux Noel”) cares about both the driver and passenger, and how this long trip (at least she wants to make it a long trip) can bring out their good qualities.
Boon, whom I first knew in “Micmacs” and whom you Netflix streamers may remember as the detective in the “Murder Mystery” movies, has a tone and age that merges him quite well as a taxi driver with his own struggles in life. And on both sides of the equation (age and generation), Renaud and Isaaz portray Madeleine with enough life and passion to show us her joys and tragedies.
It doesn’t top “Driving Miss Daisy,” but it does like to channel that film without having obvious pop culture references to that. It likes these two strangers in the front and the back, and it doesn’t need backseat drivers to tell Carion how to introduce us to them. The meter is running, so hop on in.
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