Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble

The French film "Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble" was shown in the U.S. as "We Won't Grow Old Together (1972)". It was written by Maurice Pialat, directed by Maurice Pialat, based on a novel by (can you guess) Maurice Pialat.

Pialat was known as an arrogant and unpleasant person, and he's written a novel about a middle-aged guy who is arrogant and unpleasant, but is nevertheless loved and respected by everyone he meets. Jean (played by Jean Yanne) does some sort of work in cinema, although the only work we ever see him doing is filming a crowd scene for a few seconds as he walks along with a hand-held camera. Also, at one point, Jean is painting his apartment, and he's reminded that he's supposed to "work on that script."

Marlène Jobert plays Jean's girl friend, Catherine. Catherine, who is much younger than Jean, is long-suffering, physically abused, and psychologically abused. Nonetheless, she always comes back for more. The physical abuse is that Jean slaps her and rips her clothing. (Maybe there's more, but we don't see it.) The psychological abuse consists of Jean telling Catherine that she's stupid, knows nothing, and is ugly. (He specifically points out that she has freckles and "rats' legs.") We can see that she's not stupid, and she doesn't know about films because he hasn't taught her anything. As for being ugly, check out Marlène Jobert on Google Image and decide for yourself.

We are repeatedly informed that Catherine and Jean have been together for six years. However, Jean is still married to Françoise, played by the beautiful Macha Méril. Françoise is apparently still under Jean's spell, because she tries to help him win Catherine back when Catherine has made one of her periodic efforts to leave the relationship.

So, what we are watching is Maurice Pialat telling us that he has that je ne sais quoi that entitles him to treat everyone badly and still be loved and respected by all. In fact, they don't just love and respect Jean, they worry about Jean. What will happen if Catherine really does leave him? Incredible.

If you're looking for a film that will frustrate you while you watch it, then this is the movie for you. I don't know if there's an opposite to a feel-good movie. If there is, this is that movie.

This film takes us through the sadness of a break-up. When a couple drift apart, married or not, there is pain, not just for the two but for those close to them. We see the effects on Catherine's parents and grandmother, and on Jean's wife. Grief at wrong turnings and lost opportunities, at love which no longer sustains, isn't that the stuff of drama, from the story of Adam and Eve onwards?

Yet some reviewers seem unhappy with aspects of the film, citing the unappealing behaviour of the male protagonist, the apparently autobiographical nature of the story, and the apparently unpleasant nature of the filmmaker himself.

Of the latter two I know nothing, yet why should they matter? Is a work of art vitiated if it reflects some of the creator's own life, rather the lives of others or pure imagination? Should "David Copperfield" be shunned because its cast includes Dickens and his father? We now know that Dickens treated both his wife and his mistress unadmirably, but does that invalidate his fiction? What about the many works where we know nothing about the creators, or even their identity?

As for Jean in the film, it is not difficult to identify the defects in his nature and behaviour. They are displayed for us to see, commented on by other characters, and sometimes admitted by Jean himself. Behind the cheap machismo and rampant egotism, there must be factors that have led him into this impasse. In the past he managed to charm not one but two very attractive women into a relationship. Though one's prime sympathy must be for these two women, isn't his downfall, however much self-inflicted, an example for us to contemplate and maybe even pity?

Jean has been married to Francoise for a long time; he has also been Catherine's lover for six years. He goes to the Camargue region to shoot a film, and brings Catherine with him. His behavior is so callous and violent that she takes refuge at her grandmother's house. They reconcile, break up again, then... It's an autobiographical story by a master filmmaker that won the Best Performance award for Jean Yanne at the Cannes Festival.

Jean's problem is that the more he tries to keep Catherine under his control--by wearing her down, making her doubt her own skills, telling her she's vulgar and stupid--the more he doubts that he really has her under his thumb. He thinks he's left wing, a progressive, one of the good guys, but he's just another anxious macho man. Her matrimonial prospects are better than his, but he just can't figure that out.

Jean Yanne turns in a great performance as a touching boor; he's matched by Marlene Jobert as the girlfriend who finally learns to stand up for herself. Christine Fabrega and Jacques Galland as her parents are excellent--they display more grace under pressure than most of us have to in our lifetimes. Macha Meril as Jean's long-suffering wife does not have many scenes, but is superb. She is romantic and warm-hearted, she doesn't approve of her husband's callous treatment of his mistress, but will stand by him.

After a certain amount of time, separation and divorce come down to the same emotional ordeal, eloquently encompassed by the title "We Won't Grow Old Together". Maurice Pialat's separation inspired an autobiographical novel but as if words couldn't bring the intended catharsis, he needed images, dialogues, shouts, cries and even silences to show the true nature of the beast.

I went through divorce myself and I still remember the six-paged letters with carefully chosen words, the pride-swallowing pleas and the whole affective bargain ... the truth with separation is that you don't mourn a person, or a relationship, but the very idea that the one you loved wouldn't be the life-partner you expected, nor the hand that'll softly touch yours in the deathbed. As someone said: "the woman of your life is the woman of your death". There's a symbolic death indeed upon separation, which doesn't make it an act but a process, a slow one going through the five commonly known stages: denial, anger, sadness, fear and resignation. Pialat used them all as necessary seasonings to a dish served in the sober colors of reality, using real locations to dramatize real episodes of his past experience.

Pialat could have played the leading role himself but I guess he wouldn't have brought that level of authenticity with another person but the woman he loved. And Jean Yanne was too painfully real as Jean, a grisly, gruff, disenchanted but oddly magnetic filmmaker. He's a divorced man in his early 40s venting his past frustrations on the much younger Catherine, played by Marlène Jobert. The ghosts of his failed marriage keep haunting his present, reminding constantly that Catherine is not his ex-wife Françoise (Macha Méril). Still, the complicity seems in place in the beginning; they have the interactions of a man and a woman who've known each other for years, silences aren't awkward and there's room for tenderness.

Suddenly we see Jean throwing a tantrum on Catherine struggling to handle the sound boom while he's filming in a crowed street. He insults her, pushes her, shouts so loudly that even the sanguine Mediterranean bystanders retort. Today, Jean would be considered a bully and end up arrested by the Police or filmed by a smartphone and have his career destroyed; the film reminds us of the way violence toward women was, if not systemic, at the very least was trivialized. And despite his behavior, Jean keeps his edge over Catherine, even her parents don't dare put him in his place. Maybe it's Jean's age, his strong masculinity, the way he can swiftly switch from anger to gentleness, or a possessive spirit that's only a twisted version of love.. or is it just that Catherine loves him and like many enamored people, falls into the biggest trap of a toxic relationships: the false conviction that you can change someone.

The bullying culminates in the memorable car scene where he delivers such a harsh and odious "reasons you suck" speech even Yanne was reluctant to go through it, calling Catherine 'vulgar', 'ordinary', 'ugly' and concluding with "it's over". The face of Jobert says it all; just when you think she's at the verge of teary explosion, she keeps a dignified face; words don't hurt her anymore. And she's right to spare her feelings, next thing you know, they're back together again. And that 'false start' (or 'false finish') sets the narrative pattern: an alternation of arguments and reconciliations. The more they swear not to see each other again, the more rapidly they reunite. The repetitive episodic structure might give the wrong impression of a story spun in circles with nothing really happening but since when does reality rely on plot requirements?

The whole ups-and-downs schema actually makes two points. First, undoing a relationship is as difficult as building it, if not more. Secondly, if you keep an attentive eye, you'll see that Catherine does evolve. While Jean fails to communicate with her without the uses of patronizing rants and violence, verbal and physical, Catherine realizes that she didn't stay with him out of love, but of fear. Fueled with stoic determination, her detachments takes its slow but certain path to the finishing line, finally responding to the overarching viewer's questioning: when the hell will she leave Jean?

And in that psychological arm-wrestling, Jean realizes he lost the upper hand and therefore changes the tactic: he writes romantic letters, shows his sensitive and benevolent side yet smoothly but surely, Catherine lets her hand slip. She becomes 'Françoise', the absent figure to haunt Jean's present. A confused Jean is reduced to pathetic investigations about Catherine's new man, asking her parents how he looks, how old he is etc?. That's indeed the final stage of grief in its manhood-offended expression: when we accept losing someone, we hope it's for the best. Jean still believes he has a saying on Catherine's life while she shines through her absence. Jean's confusion illustrates one of separation's paradoxes: bringing people closer. Separation is even harder in a time without Internet or social networks, when immediate dating wasn't commonplace.

Yanne, a famous TV comedian and chansonnier, reveals his dramatic side in a performance that earned him the Best Actor prize at Cannes and boos from the audience (as if they had projected their own disdain for Jean), Yanne didn't intend the festival anyway, he and Pialat didn't get along, and it is possible that the director exploited it to enhance Jean's bitterness. Jean ends up consoling himself that there's more fish in the sea and a free Catherine, happily swimming in that sea. As tough as it is, separation isn't that bad after all.

Still, what an enigmatic character, leaving so many interrogations marks: was he truly in love? Did his first failed relationship twist his capability for love commitment? Pialat's merit is to humbly allow viewers to make up their own opinions, as if he was a riddle for himself as well.

It is hard to deny that for some narcissistic gonzos cinema is nothing less than a veritable personal fiefdom where any narcissist can shamelessly indulge in prolonged bouts of self-centeredness. It is with such a dangerous thought that one can recognize Maurice Pialat as the poster boy of this kind of explosive film making. His film 'We Won't Grow Old Together' bears too many marks of his repulsive personality that there would hardly be any viewers who would be in a healthy frame of mind to consider it as an entertaining film. Obnoxious behavior, lack of responsibility and hypocritical stance vis à vis male female relationship can be identified with ease in this film. Experienced French actors Jean Yanne and Marlène Jobert are the key reason to watch this long- métrage about a troubled relationship. They have worked too hard to portray the inner feelings of a difficult albeit creative director who was unable to strike a fine balance between his personal as well as professional life.