L'important c'est d'aimer

Beautiful movie of three persons seeking to live, love and survive... Romy Schneider's performance is stunning as a porn actress desperately in love with a man who doesn't wish to live anymore, and resisting the seduction of a photograph. The picture is pretty "intellectual", but not boring. Soundtrack is fabulous...A great 70's melodrama. And what a pleasure to see Kinski!

Must see.

I'm not surprised to read here at IMDb that Romy called this her best work. She leads a cast of irresistible losers (Dutronc, Kinski, Testi) in the wholly believable debauchery that is so truly the amoral dilemma of the profession Maugham has called "THE show business". The physical electricity of these performers is such that I came away from it thirty years ago thinking that Miss Schneider was Brando's doppelganger. Or perhaps she WAS Brando! After all, they were never seen together, were they? If acting may be defined as the truthful response to fictional stimuli, then this film, which, by the way, must be screening daily in both Heaven and Hell, was perhaps shot in one cosmic take. These actors display - seamlessly - their bodies, their appetites, their loves, egos, ids and superegos. Never mind the sadness, life is for learning.

Servais ,a photographer (Fabio Testi) meets Nadine ( Romy Schneider), a B-list actress and he falls in love with her. He'll try with any cost to help her with her career. The movie talks about love as a drug. Servais is in love with Nadine who is his drug. She means happiness and at the same time suffering to him. The film describes a very beautiful love story in a very cruel and dark environment . Movie has nothing to do with the usual American romantic movies. The spectators will see and understand the soul of the main characters. The interpretations are amazing. Romy Schneider is a great actress and she is proving it again in this movie. The first five minutes of the film are outstanding. She doesn't need to talk , her face says everything !! The other actors give their best too. Zulawski makes a very special film which has his stamp. He creates his own world based on how society is structured. I think that L'important c'est d'aimer is a film that either you hate it or love it, there is no middle way. Although, it is a must see for every cinephile!!

Romy Schneider was absolutely right to consider this film as her major professional achievement. Thanks to Christopher Franck's remarkable adaptation from his own awarded novel LA NUIT AMERICAINE (not to be mistaken with Truffaut's well-known DAY FOR NIGHT) and to Georges Delerue's haunting soundtrack, Zulawski is here at his paramount, because his usual romantic excesses perfectly fit this time the subject. As for the cast, all the actors have never been so right in the part they've been chosen for : from Fabio Testi to Jacques Dutronc, from Klaus Kinsky to Claude Dauphin, not to mention Michel Robin. The scene in the bar, just after the theatrical premiere of Shakespeare's RICHARD III, when the whole crew reads the articles dedicated to their play, almost looks like a mirror of Zulawski himself, as most of his works have been misunderstood, if not definitely "killed" by the critics. if you happen to belong to the happy few who sincerely praise L'IMPORTANT C'EST D'AIMER, try to see some day the films that writer Christopher Franck personally directed from other novels of his about the same bohemian milieu, specially JOSEPHA, featuring Miou Miou & Claude Brasseur.

A simple story about an actress, her sentimental dilemma , dark atmosphere and one of the most powerful roles of Romy Schneider. In same measure, a dark exploration of compromisses , limits of intense love and pure addiction, Fabio Testi reminding a young Andrei Batalov and offering fair portrait of vulnerable young photographer, under pressure of parent, friend, protectors and the woman who he loves and her, brilliant acted by Dutronc, husband.

A great film , gloomy, bitter but pure honest , proposing not exactly pleasant ways but the truths defining, in its basic dates, its essence.

In short, not comfortable, near bizarre but fascinating for the precise images of vulnerability .