My Zoe – Underpowered Divorce Drama

Divorces can serve as the source of thrilling drama. At their best, films about the breakdown of relationships can explore the clash of different personalities, the involvement of cultural customs in determining how people choose to legitimise their relationships and the conflict between responsibility and pure, simple passion. My Zoe wants to be about all of those ideas as well as taking on third wave feminism and the divide that it has created between men and women in liberal European countries. It is clumsy and awkward whenever it tries to directly grapple with any of these themes and the dialogue is so on the nose that you feel like a gender studies thesis that has been adapted into a script. Nobody speaks like an actual human being, there are bizarre, abrupt segues between different topics. All of the actors appear to be performing for the stage rather than capturing the smaller nuances that really shine on screen.

Isabelle (Delpy) is trying to raise her daughter Zoe (Ally) in a stable environment despite the fractious relationship that she has with her ex-husband, James (Armitage). She lives with Akil (Saleh Bakri) but is insecure about the fact that she has to financially support him and their affair officially ended her marriage to James. She wants to get a promotion that will allow her to move forward in her career but her ex-husband tries to make her life miserable by constantly messing up her schedule. Their lives are thrown into disarray when Zoe experiences a life-threatening injury and Isabelle has to resort to extreme measures in order to avoid feeling heartbreak. 

One of the real issues is that Isabelle is a woman defined by the people around her and we never come to understand who she is. James is a one dimensional manner and seems to exist to make her life hell and we are asked to watch on as she nobly tolerates his poor behaviour before bringing up sexism or her desire to have a successful career. He has to snarl and frown like a Bond villain and we never get to see what his relationship with their daughter is like. His lack of depth is a real issue and the cards are seemingly stacked against him in an unfair way. We have seen Isabelle lovingly nuzzling her child and drowning her in affection but he’s just some intruder who wants to separate them. It’s not fair to reduce Isabelle down to being a saintly, self sacrificial mother while turning her husband into an ogre. It makes their dynamic far less involving and we wait around for the moment where she is rewarded for her unfailing goodness and he begins to feel guilt for his past actions.

That moment does come but it is extremely anticlimactic as the couple’s history is never clear despite assaulting viewers with basic exposition. Both actors spit out these details while viewers have to ignore the fact that this couple would never rehash the finer points of their relationship, several years after their divorce. It is obvious that Delpy has a strong desire to fashion this in the mould of one of those 1970s domestic dramas about shifting cultural attitudes towards divorce and the role of women in society. Unfortunately, she doesn’t find a way to update these ideas so that they feel modern and urgent in this moment. The script also dumbs down these issues to an incredible degree, resulting in scenes explaining basic concepts in a condescending way.

Delpy’s performance as Isabelle is another issue as she, like most members of the cast, finds opportunities to overact and project just one emotion in scenes that require a multitude of them. She frequently furrows her brow, adjusts her glasses and performs any number of other actorly tricks in order to disguise the fact that she doesn’t have much of a handle on this character. Isabelle does have various character traits but they are all so scattered and she never pulls them together to give us a complete picture of who Isabelle is. Her adulterous relationship and insecurity over the fact that her new partner relies on her income, is never dealt with in enough depth. This could have been a plot thread that felt grounded in the modern world. A lot of heterosexual couples still experience anxiety over the gender roles that they are meant to play and some men feel a lot of pressure to be the breadwinner instead of letting their wives take care of them. It’s a timely, important issue but My Zoe does not have the gumption to ask those difficult questions. 

The shift into science fiction didn’t really feel that abrupt or shocking. This was one of the few things that Delpy handles effectively as a director. She doesn’t tell us that we should be shocked by the controversial Doctor Fischer (Daniel Brühl) and his inventions. She makes it easy to accept the futuristic world that this film is set in. If only she had carried out her other duties with such assurance and ease. My Zoe really could have been something if she had figured out what her priorities were and made riskier choices.

still courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.