Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud

This is a wonderful film. The two leads are extraordinary. They express so much emotion with a slight movement in their eyes. It's about two lonely people. Their friendship seems to fill an unspoken void in their lives. The director is able to show so much emotion by merely showing the audience the little things, instead of exploding the screen with mawkishness. Every time I see this film, I find something else to savor in it.

I came across this film, purely by chance, when it was shown on terrestrial TV a couple of years ago. It's a beautiful study of a complex relationship between an older man - the urbane, world-weary Monsieur Arnaud (Michel Serrault) - and the beautiful young woman (Emmanuelle Béart) he hires to assist him in the writing of his memoirs. Initially, they are dependent on each other for different reasons - Nelly financially and Arnaud on the direction Nelly brings to his work - but as the film progresses they become more emotionally attached and the implications of this is the film's main theme. The depth of feeling that develops between the two characters comes across very strongly, thanks mainly to the quality of the two lead performances, while the sexual aspect is merely hinted at and is all the more erotic for it. If subtlety and suggestion are what you look for in a film, "Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud" should be high on your list of 'must see' movies.

I guess the main reason for "Nelly" to be one of the most popular Eruopean movies of the last years is the presence of the Goddess Beart in each and every one of the sequences: her eyes, her mouth, her perfection. Without any make-up, without wonderful dresses... she does not need anything but her natural beauty to make Mr. Arnaud to fall in love her. He hires her as a personal assistant while he's writing his memoirs, but she'll end up being his closest confident. The connection between both of them is neither sexual nor platonic... it's something else. Maybe they're just kindred spirits that meet each other at the wrong time: he knows she's too young and beautiful to stay with him. It doesn't matter if she'd be willing to begin a relationship with Arnaud, 'cause the truth is that he won't let her beauty to fade in the company of an old man which has anything but memories.

This is a sober and reflexive movie, that doesn't live up to its world wide fame (in my opinion); but, as I said before, the presence of Emmanuelle Beart worth watching it.

*My rate: 7/10

Emmanuelle Beart and the movie itself are simply beautiful, gentle and breathtaking. So-French -totally in a good way; the movie has its own pace and tone. Everything is beyond excellency: acting, cinematography, direction and first of all (it all starts with) the perfect original script. They don't make these kind of movies often (and so well-done). If you like heart and truth you have to see this quiet modern masterpiece (and Un Coeur en Hiver, also with the dazzling Emmanuelle Beart).

When you gotta go you gotta go and if Claude Sautet had to go he certainly went in style. He gave us some of the finest and most durable films in late 20th century French cinema - Vincent, Francois, Paul et les Autres, En Cour en Hiver and so many more, films we can watch again and again with renewed pleasure and he signed off with a doozy. It is, of course, a cliché that only the French know how to handle the man-woman relationship in all its nuances, unorthodoxy, etc, but one worth repeating. Its all too easy to imagine the clumsiness with which modern English/US directors would have handled the older man/younger woman situation that lies at the heart of this story but I'm ready to bet plenty of twelve-to-seven that none would have brought the delicacy of touch, subtlety that is synonymous with Sautet. When we talk of a 'mood' piece we think of Chekhov and Sautet invokes the Russian master in spinning out of thin air a fragile, gossamer-thin tacit understanding between his two leads. Beart is almost too impossibly beautiful to be true and she needs to be the fine actress she is to get past the handicap of classical features while Serrault is a consummate actor still turning out great performances. A word too about the support, Michele Laroque, a stand-up comedienne in her spare time, brings the same solid support here as she did later in Francis Veber's 'Le Placard'. I can pay this movie no higher compliment than to bracket it with 'Brief Encounter', another masterpiece of unconsummated love that is still enchanting audiences fifty years on, as Nelly and Mr. Arnaud surely will be.