In the beginning of Americano, Mathieu Demy (also the writer and director) plays Martin so dispassionately, one is immediately interested in seeing how his character’s nature will evolve over the course of the film. In the first scene, he is dispassionately making love, then he responds dispassionately to news that his mother is dead, and then he heads to America (dispassionately) to sell her house and get her final things in order. One soon realizes that this is the depth of Demy’s arc—he is not unbearably cold or distant in an attempt to hide Martin’s real passion beneath the surface; he simply cannot move past or complicate his initial performance of detachment. As a result, a film with a compelling story (though far too dependent on a single character) fails to move its audience, even as its own scenes somehow fail to move their protagonist.
Americano’s plot is reminiscent of 2010’s Incendies, where a child follows a mysterious chain of clues in search of the truth about a deceased mother. Martin has lived in France his whole life, save a few years he spent with his mother in California. When his girlfriend, Claire (played by Chiara Mastroianni), inquires about this period of time, Martin claims to have no recollection of these memories. but regards his mother bitterly as he reluctantly returns to America to carry out her last wishes. Unlike Incendies, the mystery is one-dimensional (he is simply looking for “Lola,” the friend to whom his mother has willed her apartment), and after all his searching through the strip clubs of Tijuana (because that’s where he ends up), the pay-off and conclusion of the film is weak and unremarkable.