À nos amours
The film opens with a reading from Alfred de Musset reminding us of the high price to be paid when someone, even or especially a beautiful girl, trifles with love (1834), followed by that incredible shot from behind of young Sandrine Bonnaire (in her first movie) at the bow of a boat heading towards an uncertain future, accompanied by Klaus Nomi’s “The Cold Song”, that is, his rendition of Henry Purcell’s “What Power Art Thou?” (1691), the question being the ability or otherwise of love to thaw the frozen souls of cold genius. Here, the soul is that of a beautiful teenage girl, and the film asks us to question the source of her apparent (though it’s really quite complicated) coldness. What unfolds makes it very difficult to resort to any predictable answers to that question. And, at the same time, makes it clear that such a question cannot be asked in any meaningful way unless one is equally prepared to take a deep and honest look at the sources of any possible warmth.
Pialat has an unusual ability to create scenes that are subtle and sensitive, but which also do not shy away from the wild, the melodramatic and sometimes from verging on the hysterical. To some extent, this may arise from the use of unusual improvisational methods, including by withholding information from the actors in order to surprise them while the camera is rolling. At times, one can just about see some of them thinking about how to respond to unexpected turns in a scene. Nevertheless, the courage the filmmaker demands from his actors is also the courage of the film itself, which, I think, comes from a wish to express the strange, elusive and dark sources of the desire and conflict that animate human life, mostly beyond our ability to understand what is going on. Ultimately, the film is devastating.
It is also a film about sex, and about a girl’s resort to it, or escape through it, but also the discovery of her freedom, and both the enjoyment of freedom and its price. But even though it ends up covering a span of time that sends its heroine into the future, the film itself, opening in November 1983, probably does not yet realise the massive price that is about to be paid for sexual freedom, and that is in fact already being paid at the time it is being made: Klaus Nomi will be one of the first of a huge wave to pay it, and will not live to see the film’s premiere – dead in August at the age of 39. As the film also quotes, “The sadness will last forever” – according to Theo, Vincent van Gogh’s last words, dead in July 1890 at the age of 37. Devastation upon devastation.
Pialat has an unusual ability to create scenes that are subtle and sensitive, but which also do not shy away from the wild, the melodramatic and sometimes from verging on the hysterical. To some extent, this may arise from the use of unusual improvisational methods, including by withholding information from the actors in order to surprise them while the camera is rolling. At times, one can just about see some of them thinking about how to respond to unexpected turns in a scene. Nevertheless, the courage the filmmaker demands from his actors is also the courage of the film itself, which, I think, comes from a wish to express the strange, elusive and dark sources of the desire and conflict that animate human life, mostly beyond our ability to understand what is going on. Ultimately, the film is devastating.
It is also a film about sex, and about a girl’s resort to it, or escape through it, but also the discovery of her freedom, and both the enjoyment of freedom and its price. But even though it ends up covering a span of time that sends its heroine into the future, the film itself, opening in November 1983, probably does not yet realise the massive price that is about to be paid for sexual freedom, and that is in fact already being paid at the time it is being made: Klaus Nomi will be one of the first of a huge wave to pay it, and will not live to see the film’s premiere – dead in August at the age of 39. As the film also quotes, “The sadness will last forever” – according to Theo, Vincent van Gogh’s last words, dead in July 1890 at the age of 37. Devastation upon devastation.
Mini Review: Opens with a reading from de Musset reminding us of the high price to be paid when someone, even or especially a beautiful girl, trifles with love, followed by that incredible shot from behind of young Sandrine Bonnaire (in her first movie) at the bow of a boat heading towards an uncertain future, accompanied by Klaus Nomi’s “The Cold Song”, that is, his rendition of Purcell’s “What Power Art Thou?”, the question being the ability or otherwise of love to thaw the frozen souls of cold genius.
Watch the Trailer