Clair de femme

This had some promise, given the track records of Costa Gavras (Z) and the writer Christopher Frank (La Derobade, L'Important, c'est d'aimer), but this film is a mess. Romy Schneider, always so good in roles in which she's under a lot of pressure, here just looks haggard and irritable. Yves Montand, who can do these roles in his sleep, here does.

The story is simple: two people who have recently suffered a great deal come together for consolation rather than love. The emotional tone of the picture is so confused, so lacking in human interest that even the feeble attempts at humour are welcome--the animal trainer who gets a monkey and a poodle to dance. A new low in cinematic fake compassion is surely the scene in which Montand attempts to communicate with Schneider's brain-damaged husband by means of gibberish. Lila Kedrova as the man's mother displays some welcome charm here.

This is an oddity to have come from Constantine Costa Gavras still fresh from his substantial triumph with Z. It's not that the film lacks ambition, with two major stars, a strong support cast and first rate technicians. The surprise is that this one is not about corrupt ideologies mowing down the high minded. It's an odd, rather perverse Grands Boulevards weepy - what used to be called a woman's picture before you risked time in the pillory for using that term.

A bedraggled, aging Montand has a series of chance encounters in a St. Michel cafe which will dominate his next twenty four hours - with animal trainer Valli (excellent in the Corbucci ER PIU) and a middle aged Schneider in whose bed he shortly finds himself. We notice that, unlike Hollywood actors, Europeans find it necessary to take off their pants when they have sex. He sees Valli's music hall act, with a chimp dancing with a pink poodle much to the delight of Japanese tourists, which Montand finds degalasse (the word dying Belmondo applies to Jean Seaberg at the end of BREATHLESS) He also is taken to the soirée run by Schneider's brain damaged husband's mother Kedrova where, drunk and exhausted, Montand manages to communicate with him in gibberish and gesture. Yves and Romy go round the Etoile the wrong way to the exasperation of traffic gendarmes.

A lot of this plays like the surreal non-sequiters in Cocteau, Queneau or lesser Gallic mortals and we have a grim suspicion that the film is leading to some obscure metaphysical statement that will leave you wishing you'd watched the Lee van Cleef movie in number two. However the revelation, when it comes expertly staged and played, makes what we've seen (just about) plausible and leaves us involved with our two mature aged leads.

This one was probably a break or a money spinner for its heavy duty participants but they came at it with high seriousness and the result is more intriguing than most of what was done around it.

A couple of questions. Where is Jean Reno and how does Benigni get that billing for a virtual walk-on? Would his agent like to represent me?

These people are drowning in their own distress and try to hold on to something; there are many scenes in which you see the external world still rotating, and they try to keep swimming by pretending. The absurdity is the striking part, as if there were two communications going on. Excellent dialogs "Irreverence is one way to keep misfortune away". Good acting, Montand/Schneider are credible, Valli grandiose.

Great moment of cinema: the dancing monkey and pink dogs are my favourites, and one good scene to remind give stimulus to get out and have a great breath of fresh air.

As soon as one realizes that Romain Gary wrote the original book (Frank did only the adapted scenario) , it all pieces together. Gary was Russian/Latvian migrant, and transcribes here the crushing nostalgia typical of the Slaves who have lost their country and feel eternal sorrow for this loss; they however keep going, because this is what life is about; most of the times pretending things are OK but choosing a few occasions to show up their deep feelings.

The wood doors of apartment of Lydia. This is the emblematic image for me , a sort of reflection of the two stories of lost and try to help each to other , about profound loneliness and about effort to escape from yourself.

Romy Schneider is most beautiful than other occasions and you feel the story of her character as a personal one of herself.

The dialogue is the force structure of this strange and necessary connection between two strangers looking for reasonable solutions to the lost, in different forms, of the closed other.

In many scenes, the film, story, dialogue seems incomprehensible. Maybe it is only the sin to be part of different periods and our victorious pragmatic perspective.

A film about opened and closed wood doors . The dance of a chimpanzee and a pink poodle , few drops of Fellini and a lost, again and again, bag. And, sure, the way to Caracas.