Le chat

To make a review short, the acting by Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret is nothing short of fantastic. The film is a downer but it's worth watching. There's something in French cinema that's unique. It often creates towering, almost mythical characters through mundane situations. The two actors make anyone from Hollywood look amateurish.

Made fifty years apart, "Le chat" and Michael Haneke's "Amour" (2012) are bookend films, in my view. Both depict the various ways love continues to insert/assert itself in a couple's life, even when one's health is deteriorating.

Simone Signoret and Jean Gabin convey the emotional turmoil that cleaves their marriage with as little dialogue as possible. Cooped up in the house once filled with their love, they now have to confront the painful disintegration of the passion that animated their younger selves. The world around them is literally crumbling (an obvious metaphor of their marriage), but they persist in spite of it all. A master class of acting!

A critic whose name I forgot wrote:"imagine that in "le jour se lève" (1939),Jean Gabin did not die;he would have married Jacqueline Laurent and what would have become of them?Probably what Granier-Deferre shows in his movie (adapted from Georges Simenon)".It's a harsh cruel ruthless effort:daily life ,routine,humdrum,a love worn away by time have destroyed everything."Wounds have burst open,and corridors rust/Once proud and truthful,now humble and bent/Fires which burnt brightly,now energies spent"(Keith Reid) These two former lovers have become the worst enemies;Gabin has transferred his affection to a pet,and Signoret cannot stand it.Around them,wrecking balls are destroying all the old houses,it's a transparent metaphor ;their world is crumbling and they know it.The second part,when Gabin stops talking to his wife and writes her notes to communicate is downright depressing.And however,the ending will show that even after floating on an ocean of mud,love ,or something which looks like love, survives.

When the young lust faded, the sexual appealing disappeared day by day, day after day, facial features sagged, legs turned weak even limping started mysteriously, all the joints hurts, wrinkles all over the face, the neck skin loosened, flipped and flopped like a turkey, arms and thighs muscles shrunk and dingling like hollow balloons without air, hairs lost and dropped everywhere, teeth ached and gum disease deteriorating, eyesights became fuzzy and blurry. A couple lived together over 50 years, what else would be used as an interesting conversation? Communication with what? Without sex, life simply lost the maintaining power to go on. Sex desires distinguished by enlarged prostate, tunnel dried up after menopause. If windows not opened every morning, bedroom smelled like death, not just old fart smelly odor. Cat or no cat, that's not the excuse. Everyday to old farts is nothing but unbearable torture. Heart attack is welcome since it just happens without premotion, drop dead right on the spot is actually a blessing. Swallow sleeping pills is another way out, just gulp them down with enough tap water or bottled water. When you become old enough, awaiting death is an impatient yearning like buying lottery, you never know when you hit the jackpot to bow out.

This started as a Georges Simenon story, and is typically brutal about human relationships. I like it so because of the performances of Gabin & Signoret - they were as good as you can get, and here are at the top of their powers. Either of them would have blown anybody else I can think of off the screen. Excellent, if very French.