La veuve de Saint-Pierre

THE WIDOW OF ST.-PIERRE may not be a great film, but amidst a crop of mediocre current releases, it's a fine effort that boasts a hardworking cast, awesome costumes and sets, terrific cinematography and excellent direction. For those unlikely to stay in and read MOBY DICK, the combination of austere location, mid-19th-century maritime theme, and the Reaper looming o'er the ocean tides offers a satisfying divertissement on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.

Based on actual court records, the plot begins after a Parisian military captain, Jean (Daniel Auteuil), and his new wife, Madame La (Juliette Binoche), arrive on an isolated French isle off the coast of Newfoundland, where widows outnumber balmy days 50 to 1. One night, two blind-drunk men brutally knife a man to find out if he's `fat or just big.' The court sentences instigator Neel Auguste (Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica) to death by guillotine, `the widow,' in French parlance. But the remote fishing island does not possess the instrument of destruction that its French rulers dictate and must obtain a loaner from Martinique. While awaiting its arrival, the government locks Neel in a dark cell and entrusts him to the care of the Captain and Madame La.

An MSW waiting to happen, Madame has a weakness for `desperate cases.' She asks Neel to build her a greenhouse and tend her plants, a challenging request in this hardscrabble environment. As the Parisian belle negotiates her homesickness and the austerity of her surroundings by cultivating her garden, Neel confronts his own banishment from society and cultivates his compassion. This is one of several lovely parallelisms director Patrice Leconte teases out.

The sexual tension between Madame and Neel, though enacted subtly, is nevertheless palpable. During a reading lesson, their fingers brush while scanning a page. As Neel scarfs down her soup in a mildly bestial manner, she looks on lovingly. And when he asks her why she so nurtures him, she replies, `We change, whatever we do. I am sure of that.'

Meanwhile, the fisherfolks' tongues are wagging-ever cautioning Madame's loving husband about the duo's blossoming relationship. The Captain, however, venerates his wife's `humanism' and trusts her enough not to interfere. He is another wonderful character, both strong and sensitive, passionate in his love of his wife, unwilling to back down in his defense of their collective ideals.

Both Binoche and Kusturica prove more than equal to their roles. Binoche imbues her character with much more depth than that of Vianne in CHOCOLAT. With her limpid brown eyes and achingly empathic face, she elevates this personage to the level of classic tragic heroine. Kusturica, given a part that begs overacting, never wrings out our emotions, yet shows he possesses true remorse for his actions and a heart kinder still than that of his benefactors.

Most memorable is the set. Shot in Nova Scotia and Quebec, the film uses clapboard and stone buildings, often snow-salted, as an apt metaphor for the government's rigidity in refusing to commute Neel's sentence, despite his overwhelming popularity in the village as a doer of good deeds. Clearly the film excoriates capital punishment, with such dialogue as Madame's fervent cry, `They aren't punishing the same man they sentenced!'

This widow's walk proceeds at a leisurely pace, perhaps a mite too slowly for 21st-century attention spans. But overall, if you like a good, dark tragedy, pick a dreary night and go.

As the best of French cinema does so adroitly, "The Window of Saint-Pierre" tells most of it's story laconically with knowing looks and subtle behaviors while the story it tells is a relentlessly plodding drama of unspoken words and the emotions they evoke. "Widow..." is more about integrity, honor, love, and other intangibles than it is about its relatively simple storyline and the characters involved. A beautifully crafted somber film, "Widow..." is recommended for mature audiences because a measure of maturation is required to appreciate all this austere film has to offer.

The ancient Greeks, gifted with an abstract way of thinking that was always trying to come down to earth and clothe itself with the commonplace occurrences of everyday life, did not have one all-embracing term for love, a we do, but broke it down into four types: affection (storge), friendship (phileo), sex (eros) and charity (agapao). And probably not since the ancient Greeks has a love story come along which not only divides love into its four types, but also weaves them, with enormous skill, into a single story. The Widow of Saint-Pierre is a love story of the tragic Greek proportions. It's an enormously beautiful movie, a story that gains power with every viewing. And for that reason, it's one of the most remarkable videos I've seen in a very long time.

We've all seen a plethora of films from Hollywood, which basically confine love, and the act of love, to eros. We all know the well-worn script. But what would it look like to view a film in which a relationship expresses all four types of love, and throbbing full force? I would be giving too much away if I were to tell you how these four types of love are rolled up so tightly into a single relationship, but that's exactly what we seen in the liaison between Jean, the Captain (Auteuil) and his wife, Pauline (Binoche). It's intensely interesting, because the performances are pitch-perfect. Even the cowardly bureaucrats, who feel threatened by the captain and his wife, are a picture of cowardly perfection. Their motives are all too human, all too real. But so is the unfathomable love they don't understand, and fear.

One of the things I really appreciate about this film is the way it expresses all forms of love as having boundaries. Jean and Pauline are not clinging vines. What we see is a mature, healthy relationship, each partner respecting the unique characteristics of the other. What a contrast to the infantile clinging vine romances out of Hollywood!

This was a nice little film--not great, but nice--and on a grading scale, I'd give it a B or a B-.

Two points to add to what's already been said.

First, for those of you thinking of renting this movie (I rented it on DVD), DO NOT WATCH IT WITH THE ENGLISH DUBBING (available via the "Special Features - Audio" section of the DVD).

The dubbing is horrible; voices sound dubbed, rather than seeming to come from the actors themselves. Worse, I guess in order to make the words seem to match more closely with the movements of the actors' lips, the English dialogue is (IMHO) significantly different from the French! I watched the movie with English dubbing first, then in French with English subtitles. There is actually one point in the movie where someone asks, "Why did so-and-so do that?" The answer is completely different depending on whether you are watching the English or French translation.

The movie is best watched in French--hearing the actors' real voices works so much better than hearing the dubbed voices--with English subtitles, if you need the translation.

Second point: I was disappointed that no backstory (with respect to Le Capitain and La Capitaine) was forthcoming. I thought that the unfolding tale hinted at some sort of secret, something in his (and maybe her) past, that would shed more light on their current actions. In short, I felt that the couple's motivations and character were not sufficiently explored. And if this was because the movie wasn't particularly *about* motivations and in-depth character study, then I actually think that I would have preferred more overtly expressive actors. Enigmatic looks (IMO, that's what they were) without explanation don't really work for me.

Having said that, the movie was still a cut above your ordinary film, and worth the viewing.

I was most impressed with the visual language of this movie that does not waste words to show emotions. The tensions are well reflected in the play of the actors, whose gestures, shrugs and smiles say more than a thousand lines.

Another interesting feature of the movie is that it does not follow the easy path of romance that is "expected" by the public. In turn, it exposes a world which is cruel, unfair, where justice is determined by personal interests and where those who fight the system are seen as mad and excluded from the "high society".

It is a movie about the determination to fight for something one believes in!