Arnaud Lario and Jean-Marie Lario’s latest film, “The Story of Jim,” follows not Jim, but Aymeric (Karim Leclos). Instead, in following Aymeric’s story Jim’s story unfolds. This means that this French drama does not allow its hero to lead, neither in its title nor in its narrative structure. This adaptation of Pierre Bailly’s novel of the same name (“Le Roman de Jim”) presents Aymeric as a somewhat idle character to whom events happen. His persistent inaction time and again neutralizes this decades-long melodrama between father and son, with a distant effect that keeps his character at a disadvantage.
The story of Jim, the person who would be Jim, begins long before he was born. It begins when his mother, Florence (Letitia Duch), meets an old co-worker. I heard Aymeric was serving time in prison. And yet, here he is now, seemingly unfazed by having been taken down by a youthful misdemeanor that has left him adrift, unsure of what is next or what will come. Florence is six months pregnant and finds the gentle Aymeric very cute. Unlike the father of her unborn child (a married man who made it clear that he would not leave his wife and children for Florence). The two soon move in together and raise Florence’s child, Jim, as their own at her mother’s country house at the foot of Jura.
Their life is an idyllic one. Or looks like one. Young Jim (Eole Pearson), who we soon see grow into a confident and cheerful child, seems content with his life. He loves spending time with Aymeric, the only father he knows who guides him and inspires his wide-eyed, childlike way of dealing with the world around him. But when former flame Florence returns to their lives and upends them, Aymeric, in turn, struggles with what to do with a life that may no longer include Jim. The boy he raised as his own soon disappears from his life, only to return to him more than two decades later when secrets and grudges are revealed and the elder Jim (Andranik Manet) makes peace with the “first father” he once knew. .
Spanning nearly three decades and based squarely on Emerick, Jim’s Story is less a misnomer than a thesis statement; It is Jim who gives shape to Aymeric’s life, even or especially, after his absence. As a narrative conceit, this leaves the protagonist in the Lario brothers’ latest feature sitting on the sidelines of his life story. Every inciting incident that moves Aymeric’s plot forward feels as if it was forced upon him. He does little to encourage it, nor does he do much to combat it. When Florence admits that she is ready to start a new life in Canada with young Jim and his biological father, Emerick does not protest. He doesn’t fight. He only comes to terms with her decision and finds himself at a loss about what to do when their communication eventually dwindles.
Aymeric’s unaffectedness largely sets the tone for “Jim’s Story.” He knows he often lets life happen to him: “I’m attracted to complicated stories and elusive deals,” he tells Florence early on. Sure, his story is complicated and full of dodgy deals, but he rarely interacts with them. Leklou plays Aymeric almost like a holy fool, whose doe-eyed expressions rarely belie anything but passive confusion. It is not surprising that Aymeric is constantly drawn to photography, sometimes choosing to bear witness rather than take action; to observe rather than act; To date rather than engage. And it is these images (their negatives, in fact) that visually pervade the Lario brothers’ film. These snapshots offer glimpses of the world as Aymeric sees it, of the life he once built with Jim and which, decades later, he would try to reconstruct for himself and the son he was forced to abandon.
Except for those flashes of photography that skim across the screen for brief seconds at a time, “Jim’s Story” is told in a harsh, uncomplicated manner. Inspired by Aymeric’s own style, the film unfolds with a gentle ease that finds fluidity even as it tells a story full of holes. Although it moves forward for years at a time, this French film never feels clunky or clipped—a testament to the able work of editor Annette Dutertre.
Instead, as a collection of pivotal moments in Aymeric’s life that rests, however, on its grounded worldliness, “Jim’s Story” runs like a novel (here the French title seems more appropriate) and finds its most inspiring moments in chatty scenes. Where his characters — Florence, mostly, and Aymeric’s later girlfriend Olivia (Sarah Giraudoux) — express an interesting rebuke of what “normal” families and traditional life’s journeys can look like.
The different chapters of his life aim to add a poignant picture of a man, or a father, even. However, Aymeric’s often blank expression — not to mention his apparent detachment from what’s happening around him — robs the film of a more emotional center. What feels like bland friendliness at points also feels like a lack of emotion, which is a difficult core around which to build an entire film. Thus, while “Jim’s Story” leans toward an emotional denouement that plays with the tropes of maudlin melodrama (the revelation of family secrets and the resolution of fateful misunderstandings), it cannot escape the feeling of emotional detachment on which it rests.