Mathieu Demy has made a vanity piece about nothing, except what a charmless pompous and humorless man looks like brooding and boring an audience for hours. This guy leaves his beautiful girlfriend, about whom he is oddly, babyishly equivocal, for a mindless senseless and deeply ugly excursion into SoCal and Mexico, where he makes all the wrong solipsistic empty-headed moves of a spoiled rich reckless and cowardly dope. The director is obviously a rich kid, spoiled, with cinema bloodlines that allow him to shoot self-indulgent nonsense with truly great co-stars. I was embarrassed for them. The film is to self-serious to be hilariously bad, it is just inept and annoying. Sad.

I saw AMERICANO to the International Film Festival 2012 La Rochelle, France. I had the opportunity to speak directly to the author, the marvelous MATHIEU DEMY. I asked him about the idea to make this film... His answer fascinated me! In fact the film is talking about how a man must go in a different ( and ugly ) country as USA, taking a false route and finishing by understand that memory, the real life, is not but an illusion, like the Cinema... Using old recording with himself and his wonderful and great artist, mother AGNES VARDA!!!, it was really fantastic! I love this film and "c'est tout" ! Mathieu Demy started as a child actor in Agnès Varda's films : One sings, the other doesn't, Documenteur, Murs, murs, then Kung-fu Master. Demy's work as an actor ranges from romantic comedy to drama. His breakthrough came in1998, when he was cast as Olivier, a young man with AIDS, in the musical Jeanne and the perfect guy, directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau. In 1999, he started company Les Films de l'Autre to produce his own short films. He produced and directed in 2000 his first film Le Plafond (35'),adapted from a short story by Tonino Benacquista. The film received the audience award at the Angers film festival Festival Premiers Plans and the Uppsala International short film Festival, and additional awards in Pantin, Rennes, Dignes, Mamers. In 2001, Mathieu Demy worked for director Benoît Cohen for the first time, in the film Les Acteurs anonymous. They reunited for Our precious children, in which he plays Martin, a thirty-year-old man who meets his great love again as he's about to become a father. Mathieu Demy received in 2001 the award for best actor at the Festival de Paris, for Quand on sera grand directed by Renaud Cohen. The Festival Européen Cinessone awarded him twice for acting: in 2003 for Mister V. by Émilie Deleuze and in 2004 for Le Silence by Orso Miret. In 2005, Les Films de l'Autre produced Mathieu Demy's second short film, La Bourde (20'),an experimental comedy. Mathieu Demy reprised his role as Martin for the TV adaptation of Nos infants chéris, which aired on Canal+ in 2007 and 2008. He was cast by Pascal Bonitzer for Le Grand Alibi, and worked twice for Philippe Barassat, in films Folle de Rachid en transit sur Mars and Lisa et le pilot d'avion. In 2009, he also starred in André Téchiné's La Fille du RER and in TV drama Mes chères études directed by Emmanuelle Bercot and dealing with a students' prostitution. In 2011, Mathieu Demy appeared in Céline Sciamma's Tomboy, and was cast as the lead in the romantic comedy L'Art de seducer by Guy Mazarguil. The same year, Mathieu Demy wrote, directed and produced his first feature film, Americano. Demy also stars in the film, along with Salma Hayek.

Americano attracted my attention because of the cast, especially Salma Hayek and Geraldine Chaplin. Turns out that the movie features relatives of a few different famous folks. The story is not very compelling and many strands are dropped after being started, rather than woven together in a satisfying way.

The overall story can be summed up as that of a French man with serious Freudian issues regarding his mother. Upon her death, the man is forced to confront his lifelong jealousy of a Mexican girl whom his mother cared for after having abandoned him as a child. The search for the elusive ¨Lola¨ takes him to the brothels of Tijuana, where for about half of the movie he is fooled by a prostitute into believing that she (Salma Hayek) is Lola. Only when he finally learns that Lola is in fact dead can the man return to France to reunite (apparently) with his estranged lover, having at last recovered from his Freudian issues.

The Geraldine Chaplin character turns out to be a cameo (albeit longplaying),as her contribution to the story is nearly nil, only to provide the man with a red Mustang which he ends up getting destroyed in Mexico (though, remarkably, the car thieves leave his bag with passports and cash in the trunk of the crashed car? What?!). The prostitute, despite having lied about her identity, ends up being the lucky recipient of the inheritance (a condo) intended for Lola. Why? I suppose because #HollywoodSoWoke!