These days, it must be difficult to decide on a title card that could accurately convey that the part of a person’s life you’re watching at the movies may have one foot in reality and the other in fantasy, the latter more obvious than most in Pablo Agüero’s “Saint-Ex,” where the less true to life it is, the closer it can get to the experience of the aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Agüero has had plenty of fun over the years blending fact and fiction with such films as “Eva Doesn’t Sleep,” a heady mix of speculation and research about the final resting place of Argentinean first lady Eva Peron, and resists a typical “This is based on a true story” admonition when besides any other reason, he’d probably find it too cliched, instead calling the film “a homage, loosely based on [Saint-Exupéry]’s adventures.”
Whatever liberties are taken with any biographical details, there’s a joie de vivre that suggests a more fundamental understanding of Saint-Exupéry that would elude a more by-the-book account in locating just one chapter of his life to cover in the Andes during the 1930s where he worked for the Aeropostale as a pilot, ensuring mail could make the trek between Europe and South America. Those lured to the theater under the impression that a film in his name will concern his most famous creation as a writer, “The Little Prince” could be disappointed that there’s nary a mention, yet Agüero aims for the same all ages crowd, having Louis Garrel put his boyish charm to work in the title role, navigating what might as well be another planet when trying to figure out how to fly at night with low visibility over the mountains that his planes can’t reach the right altitude to fly over.
The film’s 1930 setting is aesthetically taken to heart when Agüero and cinematographer Claire Mathon adhere to a similar visual style as the Saturday matinees that would play at a local cinematheque, full of intense closeups and rear-projection scenery all deepened with the “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”’s gift for sumptuous imagery. The story itself is pretty thin, but enough for a satisfying escapade when after Saint-Exupéry’s mentor and friend Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel) makes a daring rescue when Saint-Exupéry makes a crash landing into the sea during a delivery, Saint-Exupéry, a far less skilled aviator, has to return the favor when Guillaumet goes missing during a dangerous nighttime flight, a much longer and more complicated endeavor. The mission isn’t only personal for him, but the primary dispatch at the Andean airport, played by Diane Kruger, who as it turns out Guillaumet’s wife, and besides the prospect of saving Guillaumet’s life, they might save their Cordillera outpost as well.
Agüero adds a touch of magic throughout the film that Saint-Exupéry would surely have approved of, such as having a tango sequence break out in celebration where the wire rigging for a biplane is used like the strings of a flamenco guitar. It’s a sensibility that allows “Saint-Ex” to soar even when Garrel’s Saint-Exupéry struggles to get the extra 2000 meters in altitude out of his humble aircraft to rise above, perhaps losing some mailbags along the way, but ultimately delivering a good time.
“Saint-Ex” will be released in Switzerland on November 12th. It currently is without U.S. distribution.