Mademoiselle Chambon

This movie is deliciously silent, bursting with tension at every take. Against the backdrop of parochial France, two apparently incongruous beings find respite in each other in spite of an excruciating difficulty: schoolteacher v parent. Amidst the trial and tribulations, however, two souls delight in a certain serenity, calling into question our feelings about relationships which cross boundaries.

The father of a primary school boy meets and warms to his son's teacher, Mademoiselle Chambon. She is delicate, warm but uncertain of her future. A tender, insightful look into the nature of human relations.

Jean is a construction worker,who is invited by his son,Jeremy,to speak at his school on what he does for a living. While there,he is somewhat taken by Jeremy's pretty (and younger)school teacher,Vernonique Chambon, who after is thankful for Jean's speech on building. When Jean discovers that Veronique is a one time musician,specializing in the violin,he is further smitten with her,to the point of stalking her via daily telephone calls & parking outside of her flat and just waiting & hoping she will make an appearance. This may sound like the trapping for a psycho killer horror film,but goes in a totally different direction. Up to now,Jean & Veronique were both emotionally distant people,even to their individual families. Will they find one another,or will they merely drift apart? That's for you to find out. Stephanie Brize (Entre Adultes,Le Bleu Des Villes)directs & co writes the screen play,with the assistance of Florence Vignon,from the novel by Eric Holder. The film's striking cinematography is by Antoine Heberle,with editing by Anne Klotz. The cast includes the great Vincent Linden (Betty Blue,Welcome,School Of Flesh),as Jean,Sandrine Kiberlain,as Vernonique Chambon,Aure Atika,as Jean's loving wife,Anne Marie,Arthur Le Houerou as their son,Jeremy,and Jean Marc Thibault as Jean's Father. With Bruno Lochet,Michelle Gaddet,Anne Houdy & Jean Francois Molet. This is a film that is in no hurry to tell it's story,as it's pacing is V-E-R-Y slow (take note any & all fans of Michael Bay,or any other director of over the top bombast:you will be bored out of your skulls,so steer clear of this one,for both your benefit,as well as movie goers that have no issues regarding slowly paced films). Spoken in French with English subtitles. Not rated by the MPAA,this film serves up a few outbursts of rude language & some brief adult content (but nothing too graphic & explicit)

The Twilight series specializes in teen longing, hours of vampires, were-wolves, and civilians longing for each other without much in the way of sex. That is dull viewing. But the French seem to get matters of the heart right, as in the full length film about longing, Mademoiselle Chambon.

Jean (Vincent Lindon) is a builder with an adorable boy and loving wife. Figuratively he has built a satisfying life, yet the opening shot is of tearing down, specifically a floor but contextually his life. Into this life comes his son's attractive teacher, Veronique Chambon, all violin playing and the sweetest disposition this side of the Virgin Mary. When he fixes her window, he also begins building a relationship hanging around the edges of adultery.

The longing comes from multiple shots with no dialogue, typically European, and specifically French, because there is an artistic joy in the languid shots. The actors express their sweet frustration with small movements of their eyes and mouths, and the camera stays with them for many seconds longer than the longest American takes.

The climax comes when Jean's pregnant wife sees Veronique play violin at his father's birthday and sees Jean's very sympathetic response. The final act has the most action, and that's not much, and not necessarily what you expected. However, it's done with the greatest subtlety as the tortured Jean makes his choices and the patient Veronique sheds just a few tears, but meaningful ones, so underplayed is her part.

It's all quiet and slow, just like most of our lives. Director Stephane Brize's love of this love affair and gentle Jean's attachment to his family is apparent from the opening sequence with the family figuring out what a "direct object" is to the low-key final trip to the train station.

Like Citizen Kane's Bernstein longing for the girl with the parasol, Jean will probably never be the same having experienced the tyranny of lyrical love, adulterous or not: Mademoiselle Chambon.

One of the highest compliments I can pay a movie is that, after watching it, I find it hard to watch other movies. I am a huge movie fan and such films are rare. "Mademoiselle Chambon" is that kind of a movie. After watching it, I couldn't watch any other film, so I just watched "Mademoiselle Chambon" again. "Mademoiselle Chambon" does the best job of any film I've ever seen at capturing one particular life experience.

Some loves make sense and fit neatly into our life narratives. We fall in love with a person because we've had extended contact with that person. We know that he is of an appropriate age, social class, belief system, and occupation. We agree with this person on politics, music, and food. We have long talks with these rational loves, and share life events.

Other loves are wildly irrational; they're like being overwhelmed by an invisible wind. We look across a crowded room, catch the eye of a complete stranger, and, within moments or hours, we know we are as in love as we will ever be. We're not in love because we've had a long conversation with this person and gotten to know them; we haven't. We're not in love because we've shared key life events; we have not. We don't decide on this type of love. It decides on us.

With this love, every tiny detail, every evanescent nuance, silent moments when nothing is said, take on thunderous impact: her eyes move from the floor to his shoulder; her knees swing three inches toward his, his lips slightly part. Our hearts pound. We surrender to the full thrust of love, all of its physical and spiritual manifestations, and yet we know next to nothing concrete about the other person. Perhaps we never see that person again. Perhaps we exchange a few stolen kisses, or an afternoon of passion. Perhaps we connect forever; perhaps we say a heart-wrenching goodbye. "Mademoiselle Chambon" captures wordless, irrational love.

Jean (Vincent Lindon) is a rumpled, paunchy, middle-aged construction worker. He is married to Anne-Marie, a factory worker. They have one son, Jeremy. Anne-Marie is hurt on the job and can't pick up Jeremy from school. Jean must go. There he encounters Mademoiselle Veronique Chambon (Sandrine Kiberlain) Jeremy's teacher. And Jean will never be the same.

Jean and Anne-Marie have a few other meetings. Not much is said. Not much happens. A passer-by, carefully observing their encounters, would have no idea that he or she was witnessing an event that neither Jean nor Veronique will ever forget.

Many "slow" movies bore me to tears. "Mademoiselle Chambon" is a "slow" movie and it never bored me. I came to understand that every line of dialogue, every apparently casual scene, is a minefield packed with meaning. In the opening scenes, Jean reveals his awkward inability to help his son with his homework. This prepares us for the story of an inarticulate construction worker who falls in love with a school teacher. The topic of his son's homework is the direct object – the object acted upon by the noun – or by fate. In a couple of scenes of Veronique's apartment, the viewer catches a glimpse of Bernini's statue of a helpless St. Teresa of Avila being pierced with an arrow of passion by a smiling cherub. St. Teresa is very much the direct object of that arrow, as are Jean and Veronique. Passion is beautiful and painful, life affirming and life threatening. Passion is both sexual and sacred. Jean is shown both tearing down, and putting up, walls. These walls are metaphorical as well as actual.

Three scenes in this movie are as definitive a treatment of their subject matter as any scene in any film. In one, a musician plays music with her back to her audience. Before she begins, she turns around with a luminous look of vulnerability. In another, two people listen to a piece of music. I won't describe the third scene to you, because I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but if you see the film, you'll know what I mean.

"Mademoiselle Chambon" is not perfect. It is under-produced, in Dogme-95 style. Actors don't wear make-up; there's no professional lighting to speak of. "Mademoiselle Chambon" would have worked better for me with higher production values.

I got to know Jean, but I was never sure of Veronique. I wanted to like her more than I did, to understand her very hard choices better, and to respect her choices more. Aure Atika is miscast. I never believed her as a factory worker, or as Jean's wife. And the ending struck me as incomplete and unsatisfying. I think the filmmaker wanted to make a movie that would ravish audiences emotionally. That he did. I wanted to have an intellectual understanding of how these events would play out in the future of the characters. I didn't get that from this movie, and I left it feeling that a sequel is necessary.

Finally, of course this film is like the classic David Lean film, "Brief Encounter" starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. I think that film gives the viewer more of a sense of the fullness of all the characters, and how the events shown during the film will play out in the characters' lives in the future. In short, to me, "Brief Encounter" felt more like a complete work of art.

A measure of just how well recent French film Mademoiselle Chambon is constructed lies in a very small, although very subtle, moment between the two leads: one a married man and the other a single woman, which they share in one of the rooms in the home of that of the single woman's. He has voluntarily come round to check what she thinks is a draughty window frame, the gentleman deducing that it is indeed faulty; but as they stand over it and speak, director Stéphane Brizé places the camera in an adjacent room and shoots the interaction via a mid-shot of nothing in particular – we hang back from the specifics the two characters speak of: we know it isn't important, and the long take combining with the static camera as the chemistry the two have shared in other locales up to this point allows us to reach our own conclusions as to the dangerous places this bond is heading.

The film, a romance about characters we sense could really exist and would genuinely both do and say the things that transpire within, is a really rewarding minimalist piece working with the material at its own pace and bringing to life this tale that these two people share in its own way. At no point do we feel cheated, short-changed nor in the hands of any one who is doing any less than their utmost to tell a taut and engaging story about people at crossroads in their lives.

Set in an unspecified French town, the locale essentially doubling up as any town or city anywhere in the world, we cover Vincent Lindon's Jean and his love interest, the titular "Mademoiselle" Véronique Chambon, played by Sandrine Kiberlain. Jean is a builder, a scene on a site upon which he digs up tiled floors and generally demolishes a property so that the new inhabitants may reshape and rearrange it at their pleasure symptomatic with how he, as a man, will come to have his own feelings and emotions dismantled and reconstructed. His domestic set up sees him live with his wife Anne-Marie (Aure Atika) and their infant son Jérémy, their first scene together seeing the three of them attempt to decipher Jérémy's grammar homework and not appear to fully function as a family unit as they struggle to correctly deduce which parts of a certain sentence is the part Jérémy needs to reiterate is of a certain grammatical ilk.

The opening works on two levels, first and foremost as a sequence reiterating that there is room for this family unit of three to disagree and it goes a long way to get across the sense that there is this room for the three of them to fail to read off the same page – later on, things will become more heated as Jean goes through his wringer of emotion. Away from that, the scene additionally acts as a wonderful opener in its designs to wake the audience up; to ask them to perhaps join in with the grammatical problem proposed; to work it out for themselves – to get the mind working during this brief prelude to what is a riveting and intelligent character piece requiring such an attentive attitude. The boy speaks of how his teacher stood at the front of the class and spoke about what needs to be done in order to solve these problems; the sentiment being that his teacher wouldn't have the trouble in solving what everyone else is struggling over. It is this teacher, Kiberlain's aforementioned Véronique, with whom Jean will come to interact before later loving.

Guest lecturing at Jérémy's school in Véronique's class leads on to the visiting of her at home and the said repairing of her window, furthermore leading onto Jean requesting to hear her play the violin she owns. That last instance of Véronique plucking up enough courage to play in front of another human being for the first time in a while encapsulates the superb acting throughout, Brizé's insistence on a static camera shot from medium distances allowing us to fully appreciate just how well Kiberlain does as she sits there and wrestles with the proposal of playing for someone she's known only for about a week. One finds it difficult to recommend the film enough; it is so much more than a film fan's wet dream of static camera angles, extended takes and the French language, a burning and wholly engaging realist drama which ought to take its spot at the top of the tree regarding the best films of recent years.