Fanny

Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.

Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.

Visually, nothing’s changed, with Auteuil still framing his actors (and himself) in purely functional medium shots, occasionally punctuated by postcard-pretty views of Marseilles’ piers. Dramatically, however, Fanny is a bit meatier.

It’s best to sit back and luxuriate in the film’s unhurried pleasures: crisp Mediterranean settings, Alexandre Desplat’s mournful score and a clutch of likeable performances.

Mr. Auteuil’s passion project is sincere but not successful, honorable but not alive.

Auteuil has fashioned hidebound museum pieces that expand the backdrop with sun-dappled glimpses of port activity, while generally resisting any notes of modernity or change of emphasis. What modicum of cosy Sunday-afternoon pleasure they provide stems from the performers.

The characters, the sets, and the scenes all exist to propagate the notion that pleasure derives from repetition and remediation.