In the Courtyard is a bittersweet movie about communication. Gustave Kervern’s stocky Antoine carries a portly sadness as he understands the pain in the people around him but is unable to soothe the pain because he can't communicate. In particular, he’s can't help Catherine Deneuve’s Mathilde as she sinks ever deeper into a depression, but Antoine also almost unwillingly becomes friends with other wounded residents of the apartment building. He lives in a world of pain he can see but not address.
This could be a story of great pathos or melodrama, but Pierre Salvadori enlivens it with comic touches. From one of the earliest scenes, when a man in a park loses his temper because his protégé is unable to create large hoop bubbles, Salvadori’s humor distances us from the visceral psychic pain all the characters experience. Lev has a dark, violent past he can’t express in language and Stéphane once had a promising soccer future cut short by injury, but Lev’s devotion to the Emissaries of the Institute of Light adds to humor to his character and Stéphane’s serial bicycle theft does the same.
Unfortunately, the shallow depth of the script holds In the Courtyard back from having the impact it could. We see some of the personalities of both Antoine and Mathilde, but we’re not able to empathize enough with them as we watch them from the outside rather than feel what they’re feeling. There are fun cinematic gestures in the film – witty editing in a park scene with children and a 50s-style dog-monster attack on a city – but for Salvadori to carry our hearts though the grim conclusion, we need more engagement with the main characters.
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