Le affinità elettive

I was going to write a review of this, but there is little I can add to Peter Shelley's very perceptive review (at Amazon's video store). I will relate my experience with the video. I chose it more or less at random, as I sometimes do (in this way I try to extent my horizons, or at least to come face to face with something different), but partially because it starred French actress Isabelle Huppert, whose work I admire. As I shifted in my seat through the languid development, I thought how odd and how out of sync with a modern story this is! Strangely coy and even "Victorian" for an Italian movie! After some time it occurred to me that the only explanation is that it was adapted from an eighteenth century novel! For some reason The Sorrows of Young Werther came to mind. When I discovered that Elective Affinities was indeed based on a novel by Goethe, I was very pleased with myself until I noticed on the video jacket a reference to Goethe that I must have read and forgotten.

Let me quote a passage from Goethe's novel, Elective Affinities (1808) found in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations that goes a long ways toward explaining why Carlotta (Huppert) does not immediately divorce her cheating husband and take up with the dashing architect: "The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity." Carlotta represents Goethe's point of view.

I would also like to note that this is not Huppert at her best. She is too much long of face, and that sly cynicism of hers is a little too much on display. Additionally (I guess I can't help but review this a little!) the self-satisfied privilege of the upper classes depicted here allows one to understand the reasons for the revolutions that would again and again threaten the old order in Europe throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

"Elective Affinities," even though it stars one of my favorite actresses, Isabelle Huppert, is a terrible film. Why? The secenario is so routine that they even use the equation-symbol (i.e. A is attracted to B, while C is attracted to D., etc.) to prophesize what is about to occur, and (viola!) it does just that. A woman (I.H.) engages her lover of 20 years ago and they become married (I think that very day). They setttle in on his estate and then the husband's friend arrives for a visit, at almost the same time the women's nubile daughter arrives from college. Can you guess the rest? It's a spaghetti romance; shame on Isabelle Huppert for this one.

Taviani brothers are extremely talented filmmakers, and every movie they make is worth seeing. "Elective affinities" is a wonderful film. Based on a novel by Goethe it shows us how human lives are unable to match mathematic formulas. Tavianis direct the film with amazing simplicity and preciseness, with very few flaws. It is unlike their Italian films, but the art of those wonderful brothers is breathtaking. My Grade: **** 1/2 (out of *****)

In the Eighteenth Century, in Italy, the Countess Carlotta (Isabelle Huppert) meets occasionally the Baron Eduardo (Jean-Hughes Anglad). They has a crush for each other in the past, when they were young, and they decide to get married very soon. One year after, Eduardo decides to invite his friend, the architect Ottone (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) to stay with them and help them to improve their property. Then, Carlotta decides to invite her goddaughter Ottilia (Marie Gillain) to stay also with them to make company to Ottone. Carlotta feels attracted by Ottone, and Eduardo falls in love with Ottilia. These attractions lead the four central characters to an affair with tragic consequences. This romance is very strange. It is about infidelity, in a very different world in Italy in the 18th Century . Although those things of love are very unpredictable, it sounds very strange that a couple like Eduardo and Carlotta, newlywed and in love for each other, have this type of affair proposed in the film. I myself have not bought the story. The direction and performances are impeccable, but the story has not convinced me. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `As Afinidades Eletivas' (`The Elective Affinities')

What were the Taviani's doing in the Summer of 1996? Dozing off with a glass of Chianti Classico and a copy of Lucio Gaudino's "Adelaide" on a portable Video Recorder to 'inspire' them on the shoot of this drab, lifeless,un-inspired period piece? "Adelaide" was shot 5 years earlier, on a shoestring (with breadcrumbs from the Italian State Film Funds) and was directed by a Mr. Nobody. It too was inspired by a period Novel, not Goethe, but a 'minor' French Novelist, I believe. Goethe wouldn't 'turn in his grave' over the Taviani's treatment to his masterpiece... Yes he WOULD turn over and go to sleep, maybe muttering a German phrase of disgust. Darlings of the institutions, it appears the Taviani's will continue to find funds for such lame efforts in the coffers of Italy's political parties. The film is a 'rip off'. It's French protagonist,( usually riveting), is strangely absent, a very pale copy of Assumpta Serna, "Adelaide"'s mesmerizing ageing beauty with a caustic brilliance. Gaudino's small jewel of a film is beautifully shot, well acted, and respects the 'feel' of the epoch. Anyone attracted to such material, (and deluded by the Taviani mess) should take the time, and trouble to track down 'the real Mc Coy! Buona Visione!