Le lait de la tendresse humaine

So here's another "black box" review, comment on a festival film months gone, unlikely to reappear, yet too good to let pass now that I've thought of it. Dominique Cabréra's Le Lait de la tendresse humaine, riffs De Sica's A Brief Vacation, , another film virtually impossible to re-see. Another touchpoint is (I use it too often) Visitor Q, , but let's leave that too. Vacation, and Q, are male products. Pane e tulipani, offers a male-directed but female-written spontaneous flight.

That Christelle doesn't flee, that she remains almost unbearably nearby, is the film's crux. This nearness sustains a tension supported by film language found more commonly in thrillers than in domestic drama. Though at first she seems so spaced that one has to wonder if she's beyond the brink of sanity, hints of design increasingly mold Christelle's expression. Watch her hands, her mouth reacting to getting or not what she's mimed wanting. She's a charades player, bound by her promise to herself to be understood without capitulating. Even when she collapses into herself, defeated, I sense a gamester's miming: "Hot! Hot! No! Cold! Warmer! Very warm! Very! Very! ALMOST!!!" So, of course, a collusion develops between her and her neighbor Claire, barely acknowledged by Claire, but more suspenseful for that. At least in this one film's milieu, it's a collusion possible only between women. That Cabréra gives Christelle a male child, so that the family she leaves is a pair of males, is no accident.

I just watched a lesser film in which, as is often the case, the villain was the only character with a sense of humor. Christelle's no villain, yet she suffers here with perfect comedienne's timing. Her suffering's no less real, and maybe it's even more real, for that.

Apparently there's a trailer, so maybe this one will come round after all. Watching Le Lait de... , concentrate on the tiny, multiple-unit set, on every wall and on what's likely behind it, on distances. How far, how near is Christelle ever? Never blink while Christelle's miming at you. Stare your soul out when you think she's forgotten you.

I really hate to be negative but, I could not see any redeeming features to this film. I could not identify with or care about any of the characters. The acting was often awkward and felt unrealistic even though the style of film-making was cinema-verite. The hand-held camera's motion was distracting and brought attention to itself. Loose and rambling editing with the camera teetering into extreme facial closeups unnecessarily. The film had pretentious moments and seemed to lead nowhere. There was plenty of potential to explore and possibly comment upon post-partum depression but this film seems only to have skimmed the surface and shown us many angry and confused people and nothing more. Pointless and boring.

This compelling film concerns the specific plight of a woman experiencing an excruciating episode of post partum depression, one that causes her to abandon her family and flirt with a complete breakdown. The author of the film has used this event to depict with stunning depth and understanding the underlying impulses, needs and desires of a whole range of characters, most particularly, a female neighbor of the depressed woman who takes her into her home and offers her unconditional support. The layers of insight run quite deep, taking the moviegoer into the lives of adults and children, into relationships between married couples, lovers (adulterous and otherwise), parents and children, friends and neighbors. There's a quality of empathy that the filmmaker clearly feels that she manages to convey on film. The camera never shies from dynamic close-ups of some very expressive faces. The acting is uniformly superb, creating characters that are real in an everyday sense without the slightest concession to glamour. The script is filled with small moments that ring absolutely true and that often resonate beyond the particulars of the film's plot. As a man, and a city dweller, who readily perceives the limits of my obligations to strangers in need, I had my consciousness raised as to just what the potential of unconditional empathy might be.

Christelle recently gave birth to her third child, and one day is overwhelmed with motherhood and simply runs away. She ends up in the upstairs apartment of Claire, who is very sympathetic and lets Christelle stay even though she was planning to have a romantic evening with her married lover. Christelle's husband is forced to take care of the children, not knowing where she has gone. As the hours turn to days, Claire begins to wonder how long Christelle is going to continue imposing, and Christelle's husband also finds the situation increasingly difficult.

There are also other characters who make the story more complex, but, at least for me, didn't add much to the film. The acting by the adults is fine but nothing special, while the children seemed quite natural.

On the whole I would only recommend the film to people with a particular interest in the subject matter. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 4/29/2002.

Good thematic movie on a topic rarely discussed, the potential sudden drop of women after childbirth, that sort of depression or panic and that sometimes makes them flip out. What I find amazing in this film, in addition to this rare theme, is to see how human relationships, when they really are so, with such tenderness, are the basis of the healing process of mental or psychological discomfort. Even with these appearances of madness, the extreme human condition turns to the best with love, tenderness. When the mind falls back into that state of childhood, low awareness, low responsiveness to the world, when it is so overwhelmed, there is nothing like the milk of human kindness to take it out of its dysfunction. Psychoanalysis, in the rare corners or meanders of its complexity where one can still recognize the dignity of its mission, owes its small and rare successes to those times when it engaged into tracks where it has dared to accept the lesson of love and to let aside intellectual analysis that tends to judge and evaluate in the patient's place. Overall, this film is a message: if human beings can be grand enough to be tender to their neighbour and try to understand instead of judging, then we can see the birth and growth of a real human society, otherwise society becomes just a social mirage. Beautiful playing and directing. To see and to think carefully about.