Review of Bus palladium-French film festival

This film has a similar narrative structure with a lot of other french film I have seen, for example, Emelie, jeux d'enfants, and even the one we just saw, Pierre le fou. In my own words, this films tells the story like running water, doesn't stop, doesn't breathe, and hits the drama but hardly bounce back. Unlike Hollywood films that is distinguished with a realistic,psychological/logical narrative style, it is rather free in storytelling, with no set of rules for narrative structure. For example, this film "Bus palladium" tells the story of a French rock band's forming and diminishing" , but strangely uncommon, the film just does exactly that, with not much extra tension created or drama implicated, except the abrupt ending of the singer's death. I couldn't tell whether this film has a climax or not. There were certain moments of heightened tension, yet there didn't seem to be resolution to the tensions, instead the story just went on, as if certain details that should have been in the film were somehow missing.

It has a unique sense of documentary film lied within. It is as if we as the audiences are just observing them as the cameras do and it is not the director's job to feed us the information/emotions, but our own jobs to observe carefully and connect the dots.

Of course there is a fine line between this and director's neglects to communicate to the audience or lack of depth. In fact I m a little disappointed about the fact that there doesnt seem to be any deeper explorations in the emotional senses of the characters. Laura, the lead singer's girlfriend, sets up her cool mysterious image but does not seem to really matter in the story except her love affairs with two band members. There must be something behind her intentions or her motives of being a groupie. Does her Argentina refugee background make her insecure and lonely? She never seemed passionate about anyone. Like she said she didn't want to just be a groupie, not even a muse, but an icon. Yet her influence over the band or the music didn't really exist.