Mark Reviews Movies: SIBYL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 10, 2020

The life of Sibyl (Virginie Efira) appears almost ideal. She is married with two daughters and holds a successful career as a psychotherapist. Something changes, though, and old but not forgotten pains and regrets come to the surface, just as Sibyl decides that she wants to return to her true passion—writing. Co-writer/director Justine Triet's Sibyl follows the character as the past begins to merge with ways of thinking about the present.

The result is often confusing, not only because Triet blends the flashbacks and the central story of the present in such subtle and unfocused ways, but also because those assorted flashbacks offer little by way of commenting upon the present-day story. There's an admirable attempt to put us inside the mind of a character whose assorted drives lead her down the road of almost certain self-destruction, but the digging performed by Triet and Arthur Harari's screenplay (with contributions from David H. Pickering) is ultimately pretty shallow.

It's also a distraction from a rather novel, ethically and morally complex tale. In the present, Sibyl has decided to write a book. While suffering from writer's block, she receives a call from a potential client in distress.

The woman is Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), an actress who has learned she is pregnant and needs guidance about what to do. There are some complications: The man in the situation is Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), her co-star, and he is married to Mika (Sandra Hüller), the movie's director. Seeing the dramatic potential in this affair, Sibyl begins recording her sessions with Margot—a clear breach of her professional ethics.

All of this is intercut with scenes from Sibyl's own affair in the past with Gabriel (Niels Schneider), as well as some familial drama involving her unseen mother and sister Edith (Laure Calamy), who currently lives with Sibyl, her husband Etienne (Paul Hamy), and her two children. It's a lengthy and seemingly dead-end setup, though, to the story's centerpiece, when Sibyl is called to a remote island to mediate the aftermath of the actors' affair being revealed.

This section plays as a clever farce about egos and Sibyl's unethical ambitions leading to unexpected opportunities. The extended sequence may be funny, but it also clashes narratively and tonally with everything that has come before it. Like its central character, Sibyl wants to have it too many ways, and the results aren't productive.

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