Laurent Slama’s “A Second Life” is one of those films that elicits polarised reactions. Either you’ll frown at its modesty or be charmed by its economy. It can swing either way. The director isn’t pursuing an oversized narrative about emotional isolation; rather, she’s peering through gaps between the shards of circumstances. As much as it is internally driven by its lead, Agathe Rousselle’s performance, it also turns into a pursuit of finding grace and beauty in the world, which spreads out beyond your disillusioned perception.
The introduction to the protagonist Elisabeth happens through her depression. She also has a unique relationship to sound, hence, hearing aids are always plugged in. Through them, she’s kept on her toes by her boss. Basically, she works as a concierge, showing apartments to tourists filling into Paris for the Olympic Games. It’s a constant litany under which she finds the right fit for clients, sprinting from one meeting to the next. Meanwhile, the city itself has no appeal for her. She races through it, her emotions dulled, rather frozen over. It needs a spark, an eruption that can send her back to trusting in what life has to offer. She must wake up to the unexplored, deviations from plans that jolt forth delight and mischief. It’s what she lacks. The appetite for life has run out.
There’s a brevity of style in “A Second Life,” which quietly takes you inside the narrative folds, spare as they are. The film is a snapshot of encounters between individuals who find sudden kinship in each other. Elisabeth’s weariness with life has closed her off entirely from joy. She’s always anxious, too consumed in work to notice the flowers, the little things that make living worthwhile. She has no friends. Her boss is on her back all day, prodding her to secure more deals. Elisabeth has imbibed the damaging work ethic so deeply that she barely functions as a human being open to life, removed from partaking in adventure.
Rousselle is excellent as a woman struggling to tether herself back to life, even as she’s flailing to survive from one day to the next. While Elisabeth is meticulous at her job, which requires a lot of social energy, she stays aloof, inaccessible. Nothing seems to move her or give her a burst of joy. Stuck in a thankless concierge job, she seeks to branch out and explore a change of career. However, when Elijah walks in (a livewire Alex Lawther) as a client who’s rather imposing, her routine is disrupted. Instead of cursory interactions, the young guy stretches out the exchange with Elisabeth. He claims he specialises in hypnosis. She’s initially sceptical, straining to be done with him as quickly as possible. But he exerts with his rollicking company, roping in a band of friends.
Unravelling over the span of a single day, “A Second Life” situates the turn in a person, when she moves from drab defeatism to taking another shot at living vibrantly. But to inch towards fulfilment, recognise a swelling beauty, you might need a nudge. This is what Elijah is for Elisabeth: offering an expansion of perspective and spirit. She’s mostly downcast, containing her miserable inner life tightly within, but her mien gives away her lack of faith in people and new experiences.
When you cut yourself off from surprise so stubbornly, where does hope sneak in? Sometimes it takes strangers to lift you, to advance towards life-affirming gestures. If all’s bleak, a ray of light can stalk in from corners you never thought existed, reaching out and propping you up. Even if you turn your back on life, it’ll stagger you occasionally by how much it wants you back, to re-engage and look for inspiration. Slowly, Elisabeth lets herself be guided, rather swayed by whatever Elijah and his friends do, rambling through the city.
For once, Elisabeth chucks her job, the deflated-ness it has lodged in her. Being around Elijah, she gets a fresh lease. Initially, she wants to distance herself, but eventually warms up to discovery, being taken on a tide of absolute uncertainty. To live is to exult in the unknown pleasures. “A Second Life” is a celebration of that re-awakening. The final act is a tad hurried and pastes in hidden scars in a rather desultory fashion, but it doesn’t take away from the clear-eyed simplicity on display throughout.
