Les choses de la vie

With "les choses de la vie" ,Claude Sautet relinquished his former style ,film noir ("classes tous risques" "l'arme à gauche" both worth seeking)in favor of bourgeois psychological dramas .

"Les choses de la vie" was the first link on the chain,and -with the exception of "Max et les ferrailleurs" (1971),which showed Sautet at the height of his powers,when he came back for a short while to his first inspiration-remains the best of this "cinema de qualité".

Unlike the other works ("Mado" "Cesar et Rosalie" "Vincent,François,Paul et les autres" "une histoire simple" ,etc etc etc) ,"les choses de la vie" has an emotional power and an unusual inventive direction.Editing is stunning (the first picture is one wheel of the car ),and never a car accident was filmed with such mastery.Flashbacks are used with great skill too.The nightmare scene (the wedding) remains very impressive today.And the metaphorical way Sautet uses to depict the hero's death commands respect and admiration.The last part of the movie is almost completely silent,but the strength of the pictures and the actors' talent (Piccoli,Schneider,but Lea Massari and Jean Bouise too)work wonders.Superb score.louis Delluc prize.

Remake :"intersection" featuring Richard Gere.As I cannot say something nice...

I loved the novel . And I was seduced by the film. Because it represents more than a good adaptation.

First, it is a beautiful new demonstration of the art of Claude Sautet to explore facts behind the silence veil, from the complexity of relation to the vulnerabilities and certitudes, the basic traits of bourgeous life and the spirit of family, the loneliness and the game of apparences.

Second, for the great acting .

Not the last, for the powerful scenes, the most intense remaining the wedding and the ship ignoring him. Romy Schneider is just admirable in each scene, few of them reminding The assasination of Trotsky.

More than a good adaptation, it is a poem about essence of life, about regrets, decissions and force / meanings of love. And , sure, about the cold plus tard.

One of the most impressive virtues, the scenes of accident , splendid because, reading, years ago, the novel, I believed than that scenes are impossible to be proposed by a film . But, I ignored the gifts of a Claude Sautet.

While it's hardly the only film to have ever played with a non-linear narrative, still it takes a little bit to get a grasp on the proceedings as they go back and forth, and requires active viewership. With this in mind the tack is especially useful for 'Les choses de la vie' as at its core the story is relatively simple - simple, but nonetheless engaging and enjoyable. Even setting aside the hops to and fro in time I take issue somewhat with the sequencing insofar as it initially lends to a sense that the picture is having a hard time finding the right tone; I think another imperfection also rears its head in a few instances of dialogue that are better at conveying a broad mood than specifically speaking to characters' relationships or goings-on. For any idiosyncrasies or subjective faults, however, by and large the finished product is quite good - and in fact in the latter half the same sequencing that marks some roughness in earlier scenes is essential in producing the sparks of brilliance in later ones that help to elevate the movie to another level.

Framed in no small part as recollections and flashbacks following an accident, the picture is a loose but calculated portrait of a man figuring out what he wants in life, and the drama and tragedy that upend it. As such the film relies heavily on the strength of Claude Sautet's direction, and even more so on the performances of the cast. The acting is restrained yet characterized by controlled, nuanced range and emotional depth, tact and subtlety that comes across even where voiceover is employed. Michel Piccoli, Lea Massari, and Romy Schneider are all excellent, and audiences would certainly expect no less from them; those in smaller supporting parts are just as swell, though, in breathing life into the tableau. If more significant in select bits and pieces, Jean Boffety's cinematography and even more so Jacqueline Thiédot's editing are terrific, sharp and shrewd in heightening the impact of some moments, or in the latter half being a substantial source of it as the sounds of urgency are painfully contrasted with far brighter imagery.

In all other regards 'Les choses de la vie' is wonderfully well done, including not least the sparing but exquisite original music of Philippe Sarde that lends to the poignancy of the sorry tale. The stunts, effects, and special makeup that dominate in the pivotal car crash are superb, and the feature can claim fantastic production design generally. The costume design, hair, and makeup are lovely across the board. And, yes, I think the writing is uneven in terms of the approximate second half carrying the overwhelming majority of the meaningful weight of the story, while earlier scenes are mildly insufficient to that same end. Be that as it may, more than not the screenplay proves itself over time: characters and the relationships between them are given all the definition they require to round out careful scene writing, and the meticulous construction of the narrative is just as if not more important than the beats themselves to letting its gravity ring out. The film may not be flawless, but for what it does well, it more than compensates for any perceived issues.

When all is said and done the title is more compelling and satisfying than I was ready to give it credit for at first; the value may be primarily shifted to the back end, but it's very much worth it. All the same I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Sautet's movie is an outright must-see, unless perhaps one is a big fan of someone involved - but it still stands as a fine testament to the skills and intelligence of all on hand. Well made all around, ultimately the writing and editing actually leap out just as much as the acting and direction does from the get-go, and marginal imbalance is easily forgiven. If you have the chance to watch, 'Les choses de la vie' is a great drama that's worth checking out.

"Les choses de la vie" is the ultimate "mid life crises" movie. A middle aged man must (but can not) choose between his younger girl friend on the one hand and his ex wife and son on the other hand. As a result he gets irritated and frustrated. He smokes heavily and drives aggressively.

Michel Piccoli wonderfully impersonates this character (Pierre Berard). It was a good choice of television channel "Arte" to select this film in memory of Michel Piccoli, who died in may 2020 at the age of 94.

"Les choses de la vie" also was the film in which director Claude Sautet changed from "crime" to "drama", and especially the drama of the middle class. He so became a sort of French Ozu. But where the middle aged Japanese man above all is interested in the marriages of his daughters (or the lack thereoff), the European middle aged man tries to prove that he is still capable by taking a younger mistress.

Sautet tells the story in a peculiar chronological order. Center piece in the movie is a car accident with Pierre as its victim (after all he was driving aggressively). Just like a stone thrown in the water gives wrinklings moving in ever wider circles, the injured Pierre has memories that go further and further back in time. At the end there is no clear distinction anymore between memories and dreams.

Pierre Bérard is a man in his forties, a lean and attractively masculine architect exuding self-confidence and that nuanced shade of charisma in gray-flannel suits executive display like a second nature.

On a sunny day in the French countryside near Nantes, a lorry full of pigs is caught in the middle of an intersection; blocking the way to Pierre's car coming at full speed, and with a truck coming in the opposite direction, Pierre can't avoid the head to tail, he veers off the road, hits a tree, spins and turns over and over before being ejected on the grass. The accident lasts less than ten seconds but is treated like a longer interval allowing Pierre to recall all the events that preceded it... and also to tell us that real people don't 'go out' with style and only Sautet's artistic license made a truly engaging character out of a rather ordinary man.

Now, there's more than the "whole-life-flashes-before-eyes" trope, more than the brutality of a sudden accient that the magic of cinema can stretch to a long exhausting hour, itself being the result of ten days of shooting, there's more to it. There's a stylistic decision from Claude Sautet that marks one single event with the stamp of human obsession: like the Golden Palm winner of 1966, "Blow-up" and a mysterious picture or the winner of 1974 "The Conversation" with a mysterious recording, the adaptation of Paul Guimard's novel explores an 'act of God' with the hopeless insistence suggesting that something ever went wrong.

The title gives the unique clue, that's only part of the "things of life".

The film opens with an unscrewed wheel rolling like the last remain of a life in motion. Pierre is lying motionless on the grass, his car already burnt up. Cut to Pierre, lying in bed, with Hélène (Romy Schneider), so much younger we suspect she's not the woman with the ring. There's something about Michel Picolli's physique that makes him strangely more appealing than matinee idol Delon, whose movies with Schneider feel designed to attracts younger audiences. Picolli with his receding hairline, his silvery sideburns, his hairy chest and his naturalness makes the relationship somewhat more relatable.

The intentionally unsubtle transition to the first flashback exposes a naked truth about Pierre's life. The whole accident is shown in slow-motion and intercut with events and incidents set before, getting us close enough to his state of mind during the brief lapse of his accident to seize the irony of his whole life: only when he regained control that he was caught off-guard. In the slow-motion parts, you can see in his face a grim look either out of anticipation of pain, or worse, the realization that he had just broken his "Pot of Milk" like La Fontaine's dairymaid.

Picolli dominates the screen, his chemistry with Helene is believable but there's something so 'definite' about their project to leave for Tunis that it doesn't fool us about Pierre's motivation. He's got a life besides Hélène: a job, a friend (Jean Bouise), a gifted son (Gérard Lartigau) who manufactures electronics gadgets and his ex-wife Catherine (Lea Massari). Every ordinary moment has a sort of casual nonchalance, not interesting in the cinematic meaning, the expositional value would even compromise our interest if it wasn't for Piccoli floating above his own arc with a thinly veiled duplicity.

When he takes an old childhood picture from an old relative or when he has an intimate conversation with ex-wife he grows some complicity, it's like the unexpected activation of the subconscious before something dramatic would happen. And so the flashbacks all build up to the moment where he cancels his holidays with Helene, to spend more time with son. He's evasive in his explanations, with the guilt-ridden expression of a man who can't make the fatal move, I could relate to it. The middle-act weakens the characters but humanizes him in the process.

His chain-smoking isn't even a detail, he smokes so much that IMDb's cigarette count on the Trivia page made me laugh (46, by the way). It's not much the addiction but rather the necessity to plug himself to old habits, the unmovable forces that govern his life without hurting anyone but him.

Another scene shows his first encounter with Helene during an auction, outbidding her for such a futile piece of art it leaves no doubt about her status as the trophy girl. Helene becomes the lighthouse illuminating his second youth, shown through romantic outdoors interludes à la "Love Story", all converging toward the tragic intersection and its nihilistic taste bacK.

Life is a series of random events that constitute our arc, the events that prompted Pierre to write a letter, to retract himself for sending it, to make the final choice, Pierre talking to himself and letting the viewers know the contents of his thoughts, all these things don't amount to much when destiny decides to cut short all our goals and projects.

When Pierre is lying on the ground like Rimbaud's "Sleeper of the Valley", his thoughts are internalized, passing the torch to the more traditional voice-over (that might have inspired the final monologue in "Carlito's Way"). Images aren't set in the past but in a future too idealized to be taken at face value. Indeed, when Pierre's imagination starts, his reality is fading out slowly, becoming the subject of morbid curiosity. The show of life goes on with the anticlimactic spectacle of normality: angry drivers, quarreling couples, policemen, doctors, hospitals and all that jazz.

We're never in total control of our lives, and as one of my friends used to tell me, we spend our life writing the past, not the future, or like John Lennon said, "life is what happens while you're busy making plans" or as LaFontaine said:

When I'm alone, I dare the utmost: [...] Diadems rain down on me.

Some chance event then brings me to my senses, And I'm my lowly self again.