Marie-Jo et ses 2 amours

"Marie-Jo et Ses Deux Amours" is the story of exactly what the title says. A middle aged woman Marie-Jo, seemingly happily married to her kind-hearted husband Daniel with a smart teenage daughter Julie, is having a concurrent serious affair with another man Marco. OK, this melodrama is not my cup of tea to begin with, but I stayed on to find out what happens to this love triangle. For me, the whole movie is maddening because the director never really tells us why Marie Jo would sacrifice her family for this Marco guy. How Marie Jo and Marco met was merely glossed over. Whenever they meet they are probably naked in bed. The story telling is very slow, taking all of two hours. And this repetitive meandering leads to a very sudden and unsatisfying conclusion.

Marie-Jo is a woman who lives a perfect and happy couple's life with his husband, Daniel, and his daughter Julie. Daniel has a small building company and Marie-Jo works as ambulance driver. But Marie-Jo also loves Marco, a pilot of Marseille's harbour. Equally loving the two men, Marie-Jo shall face a very difficult situation and she lives this double love as a curse in spite of happiness that she has with it. She particularly suffers to be lying to her husband and not be able to share his love for Marco with him. One day, she makes a choice and goes away from his house to live with Marco. But, she can't accept the distress she has herself given to her husband and, after some days, she returns home. Nevertheless, Marie-Jo will return once a time with Marco and that will be the cause of the final drama. During a sea excursion aboard their boat, Marco and Marie-Jo will die by drowning. Suicide or accident? The movie perhaps a little too long is valuable by the actors' performance in this tragic love story, the sensibility of the telling of this adultery situation, the well-painted ambiance of human relationship in this Marseille district called "L'Estaque" and the magnificent Renato Berta's cinematography.

The 2002 film 'Marie-Jo et ses 2 amours' explores the common theme of a love triangle between a woman is in love with two men. Marie-Jo played by Ariane Ascaride is married to Daniel played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, and she loves him, but is also in love with Marco, played by Gérard Meylan. Throughout the entire movie she oscillates between these two men, and can't choose.

The story is weaved in Marseille with many nude scenes as well as maritime sea pictures. Mary-Jo is torn apart by her love, feels utterly guilty towards her husband and daughter, and eventually discloses the affair to her husband. Shortly after she leaves her husband and goes to live with Marco. However guilt and remorse bring her back to her husband who tells her that he would not be able to share her with Marco.

The movie builds up slowly towards the unknown question of how the love triangle will end. The secret of who is Mary-Jo's true love is revealed in the end, when Mary-Jo and Daniel take their boat to the water. Daniel has an accident bangs his head and falls into the water. Mary-Jo jumps to the rescue but they both sink down.

And Mary-Jo does not let go of Daniel's hand. Perhaps a declaration of her true love, and final choice.

I found this film easy to watch (as might a lot of males given the amount of skin shown on the screen) because as well as the plot which is apparent from the title of the film, it gives a great feeling of what the ordinary parts of Marseille are like. It's like walking or driving around in the city. One of Marie-Jo's lovers is a builder, the other a ship pilot. We see what their lives entail, and how she complicates them. It's interesting to see a woman nearly 50 years old carrying off a sexually-charged role with such self-assuredness. One can't imagine this happening in a Hollywood movie like this. It also refuses to take a moral tone on what she is doing, and overall the action seems more matter-of-fact than melodramatic. Whether you see this as realistic or boring depends on your expectations of this sort of film. To me, it seemed realistic, at least for the French, and it more or less kept me guessing how or if things would be resolved, right up to the rather odd conclusion. I found this was the most unsatisfactory part of the film, mainly because it was hard to see why things happened the way they did, it almost looking like the ending was tacked on merely to put some sort of conclusion to the film. Overall I quite liked it, for showing that ordinariness can still be interesting, and that everyone has to decide on morality for themselves.

How many films haven't you seen (especially French ones) about the married woman having an "affair"? There aren't many surprises here either, but the acting makes it believeable anyway. It's too much to say that this is like a documentary, it's far from it, but the realistic performances by Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Pierre Darroussin give real life to everything.

Marseilles plays a big part here. That city is almost like an actor. The emotional conditions for these people might have been different somewhere else. The tempo is slow however and so is the temper. You have time to breath, watching this.