Isabelle Huppert (as herself) is a French film star who six months ago suffered a tragedy when the grown up son, Michael, she had with fellow French movie icon Gérard Depardieu (also as himself) committed suicide. She is still in mourning, but has been offered a chance at spiritual peace when their son sent them both a letter before he died - so is he dead at all? The missive tells them to be in and around the region of Death Valley in late November, visit specific landmarks, and eventually wait for a sign from him, and that way he will prove his love for them. Isabelle secretly hopes he will appear in person, and she meets up with Gérard at a hotel near the desert so they may embark on their excursion...
Now, Huppert and Depardieu (who are billed merely by their surnames here) were playing themselves, but they never had a child together, however his son, the actor Guillaume Depardieu, did indeed die at an early age, though he did not commit suicide, he passed away from pneumonia, so you can see how writer and director Guillaume Nicloux was messing around with real life, much as he had done with his previous film, the conjecture The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq which took the famed author's temporary disappearance and spun a yarn that was more deadpan comedy than an authentic account of a minor mystery. With this, he blurred the lines between fact and fiction even further.
Certainly Death Valley is an area of stark natural beauty, so if you were making a film there you could emphasise its elemental enigmas and feed that into your plot, which was precisely what Nicloux did. For much of the time it came across as deceptively straightforward, or it would be if it had not continually been reminding us of the bizarre quest its central couple were on, the weight of decades of significant roles that had been affecting generations of audiences pressing heavily on the pair's performances. In their first film together in thirty-five years, mostly they got to act confused as they delved deeper into the realisation of how strange what they had embarked upon was; common sense told them that there was no way Michael could return.
But one theme was how a sense that there was something at work in the universe was essentially unknowable yet offered glimpses tantalising us with the possibility that we could understand, which was more or less what happened to the two stars here. The mundanity of being a tourist was contrasted with the great unknown they were contemplating, and the concern that as they both were now getting on a bit they did not have many years left, thus denying their fans more performances, was a pressing one. Further than that, we could muse that we were selfish for wanting more time with these people, just as the fictional Isabelle and Gérard yearned for more time with their fictional son in spite of not appreciating him enough when he was alive - they both admit there were periods of years when they were not in contact at all.
There were a few laughs here, as the absurdity of the premise, both within the context of the story and on a more meta level, prompted a number of chuckles (Gérard autographing a clueless fan's book "Bob De Niro" was highly amusing, for instance), and the two legends were genuinely endearing as the importance of their contribution to the world of cinema was brought to bear, hinting that they could rekindle their past relationship because of the affection they had for one another and in turn the affection they brought out in their many fans. But then you had to consider the weird bits that were impossible to ignore: Isabelle getting grabbed by the ankles in bed during the night and believing Michael has sent her a sign, Gérard getting an ominous message from a deformed girl that may or may not be in his head, and the last ten minutes where events are settled with a conclusion that was so reluctant to let us know what had happened it may have you believing Valley of Love was a waste of time. It wasn't, because these two drew out the best in each other; you enjoyed seeing them, which was what movie stars were all about.
