Coup de foudre

This is a wonderful film, the story of two women whose lives gradually become entwined that each can fully bloom. The story of their meeting their husbands, becoming disillusioned with them and then discovering each other is a lovely story. There are problems with the sub-titles in the DVD, so if you were to rely wholly on what you read, the film would not work as well. Overall I enjoyed this film very much. A lovely story of discovery and awakening, with much left to the viewer's imagination, but all the details add to the whole.

The sweetest thing about this film is the portrayal from a daughter's view of her parents' struggles with who they are and their relationships with each other. The ending dedication of the film is quite poignant. This film is a reminder of the ways our lives are thrown together and how that intertwines with the choices we make. This is a bittersweet love story on more than one dimension.

I hadn't seen this movie when it opened because I was at a different point in my life and was watching too many women's films in film school. Finally, 37 years later, I decided to give it a chance. I was enraptured by the style of the film, the acting, the flesh and blood characters, the beautiful protagonists. It is somewhat slow but its pace is not the kind of pointless slowness that one would sometimes expect. In other words, the film a story that takes place over 10 years through episodes that rely mostly on dialogue between the characters. Kurys, the director, always makes sure that there's a lot going on in every frame and, if you are a good observer, you will be able to contemplate the meticulous production design and the subtlety of the acting, which is constantly transmitting information about the time, the characters' development and the story. As far as women's films go, this one is not to be missed. Isabelle Huppert was never more enchanting. Super elegant cinematography by Bernard Lutic in Panavision.

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Michel (Guy Marchand) falls in love with Jewish refuge Lena (Isabelle Huppert) at first sight and offers marriage as a way she can avoid being sent to a German concentration camp. She accepts, and although she doesn't love him, they have two children and are still married when we pick up the action again in Lyons in 1952 when Lena is 29-years-old. There she meets the sophisticated and well-to-do artist Madeleine (Miou-Miou) who awakens her to the drabness of her existence as a housewife with a loutish husband who now runs a gas station. The attraction between Lena and Madeleine is very strong, and very threatening to the men, especially to Michel.

Huppert's poignant and bittersweet portrayal reminds me of her delicate work in Madame Bovary (1991). There is the same listlessness expressed along with a vague desire for something better out of life, and the anticipation of the sadness that we know will come of such desire. Miou-Miou is sharp and cynical with perhaps a streak of the manic-depressive about her. The love they spontaneously feel for one another is real and beautiful and makes us want it to be fulfilled. But Lena holds herself back because of her family, and then it is the men and propriety that get in the way.

Of course this is very French and Lena and Madeleine hold hands and comfort one another while telling each other their innermost secrets including the infidelities of their spouses, etc. (The men have no such communication.) Director Diane Kurys exercises more restraint in showing the physical nature of their mutual attraction than would be displayed today. Lena says to Madeleine at one point, "I want to kiss you," but we do not see them kissing. The most explicit scene sexually is the startling, but delicately expressed, meeting with the soldiers on the train where we discover the full extent of Lena's frustration.

This is not quite a great movie. The pace is a little slow in spots and sometimes the focus is not as sharp as it could be. But it is an extraordinarily honest movie, and I'll take that over sharp technique any day. Huppert is not only at her best here, but her exquisite and subtle beauty is shown to great advantage. Miou-Miou is also very pretty of course--this is the first time I've seen her--so I would say her strength of character is perhaps her strongest suit. This is a human tragedy on a small, intimate scale, one that we can't help but feel could have been averted had those involved understood one another better, had they been a little wiser. We've all been there before and so we can share the sadness and the sense of loss.

Diane Kurys made four films out of her childhood and adolescent experience; that's one of the richest mining for memories in cinematic history. Besides Coup de foudre/Entre nous, there are C'est la vie, Diabolo menthe/Peppermint soda, and Cocktail Molotov (which I have commented on). Kurys's experience is growing up Jewish in post-war France, where the social values are secular but the traditions of the community she belongs to are not.

The story of Lena and Michel may seem bizarre to North Americans--they meet and marry on the same day to escape deportation to the death camps--but it must have seemed quite understandable to the people who had to live through that madness. That Michel loves Lena passionately while she finds him dull and vulgar is also normal. These people are making-do with what they've been given, as are Madeleine and Costa, the other unhappy couple.

You either love or hate Isabelle Huppert--I must admit to the latter many times over the years, but Miou-Miou is worth whatever the rental or purchase price for this picture is: she's just wonderful; the smallest gesture of her hand carries so much meaning. One great scene has Costa, the world's worst businessman, bent over the sewing machine trying to add sleeves to shirts with only one sleeve that he's bought on the black market; Madeleine stands in the next room working at a sculpture, simultaneously trying to console Costa and quietly make him realize what a mess their lives have become.