paws-7

This film is simply one of the best I've ever seen about WW2. It shows, with few characters, few accurate words and in the overwhelming emptiness of the desert, the true face of war: total nonsense!

The plot, which puts 4 French soldiers in the situation of taking a German prisoner, together with his car, on a trip through the desert back to El-Alamein, is brilliantly written by Michel Audiard. The author shows us how enemies, being held away from fighting, can learn to progressively appreciate themselves... or not. Irony and emotion just stick together along the whole film to the end. True, human and disabused.

I don't have anything more to say. Or just one thing: it's the fourth time I watch that film, it's the fourth time I'm caught by it until the last second!

This film shows marvelously well how adult people can act like children and be cruel exactly in the same way. As everybody knows, if you are different (best example: you don't like sports...), you always can find a bastard to make fun of you. Here, the "bastard" is played by Patrick Dewaere. What makes him really dangerous is that he is intelligent enough to never offer his victim, Patrick Bouchitey, a way to get out of his mental claws. He has found the "weakness" of his prey, and he doesn't let her go. Until... He has this kind of "stupid" intelligence, which makes him very able to get control over the others, but totally unable to perceive what's going on inside of himself. And at the end, he will be the one who will be depicted as the "loser", with his small suit and briefcase, being married without any real choice. Claude Miller never let his characters talk to much. He is a master in organizing what's left unsaid, showing here a glance and letting there a question unanswered...He makes us get into the emotions of Patrick Bouchitey's character, he makes us feel uneasy. Even the presence of the fiancée doesn't really ease the pain, because we feel that it could lead to more humiliation.Until...

When nostalgia meets subtle humor, nonchalance and Italian "bigmouth"-way of expressing ideas, there's where you can find "C'eravamo tanto amati". The emotion is always there, but the smile is never far away.Italian filmmakers (not all, but Scola is definitely one of them)have this lovely way to make sad things seem quite funny (apart of one or two very touching scenes), and funny things a bit melancholic. This film talks to your heart. It appeals to a wide range of emotions, each of them never alone but delicately mixed with others. This story about love, friendship, political involvement, and their evolution (dilution?) through the years could have easily lost itself in drama and self-pity, or in first-degree optimism, which are the two great traps which lots of directors fall in. But Scola is far, far above that. This film is life as it goes. Special mentions to the scenes between Vittorio Gassmann and Giovanna Ralli.