A Economia do Amor

So this is an indie movie. It isn't here to entertain you, it's aim is to illustrate life through art. You probably won't like the characters. You probably won't like that there is not a neat ending. This is tragedy explored through film. It is real and painful to watch, as a failed marriage often is. There is a scene where the friends of the ex-couple sit on, awkwardly, at a dinner party as cruel words and fighting breakout between the couple- and that is a good metaphor for the viewer's experience. It isn't pleasant, but it is real. This is life shown through art. And, in some ways, it feels a lot like what the recent and much talked about Marriage Story could have been, had that film been less permeated in the whimsical and humorous tone that made the film so palatable, despite the sad subject matter. I think this film shows a tragic part of life in a way that is important for the viewer to think about.

Some American films about couples beginning to fall apart have been well done and funny even, but this film takes the whole matter far too seriously. It is a serious matter but no one wants just woe and woebegone. I much prefer "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "The War Between the Tates." The French and francophone Belgians take everything too seriously except what should be taken seriously.

This film is a rather realistic and also depressing drama. The true story and also accurate description of the daily trench war, domestic trench war between a man and a woman married since fifteen years and who see their couple fall apart like an iceberg in hot summer. It is highly depressing because it is so close to reality for many many folks. Some sequences are very disturbing, such as the one when the man comes inside the house, during the diner with his wife's friends...You have the feeling to watch real life events and people talk like in real life. I thought of another film also starring the outstanding Berenice Bejo: LE PASSE, released three years ago. The story was not really the same but the directing and acting were very similar.

Don't miss it. But not if you are with your wife or husband and you get through a major crisis. Because that would not make it. Choose BRICE DE NICE instead.

A divorce is never easy and such settings have been plainly used by movies in any countries. This movie however adresses a specific topic, as the matter is on separate maintenance, money and housing. Here, the focus is not the fight for the children, as almost always in such movies. This topic is addressed through a specific situation: if the couple separates after years of common life, they continue to cohabitate, because of the money issues the man has and because they couldn't find an agreement on the split.

I felt this movie had somehow two parts, one with the conflict between the former couple, the rising of tension, the dynamics. At that time, I would have given it a 8: well shot, well directed, we are faced with a situation that can't last. The second part tries to go on with the story, with the objective to make things move and reach a conclusion. It was necessary but less successful.

The film succeeds to shed light into the fallacies of a family, the distancing of the couple, the financial issues, and the stress associated with raising up children. The main actor, Berenice Bejo plays an awesome part of bringing out the feelings of the stressed mother who has put all effort in raising up her children, sacrificing everything else, including her husband. The husband is a secondary figure in survival mode, trying to make sense out of what is happening, occasionally exploding but most of the times playing his share in raising up the kids, of course in a less successful way than their mother and her expectations.

The film shows the natural carelessness of the father, the hate that builds up in the mother towards her husband, the dynamics of parenthood and the impediments of divorce, which encompasses the mother's dream of freedom.

I loved the spontaneous and unsuccessful way the father tries to keep the family together, the mother's unsuccessful effort to keep the kids happy while trying to get rid of the husband, the animal-like behaviors of a failing husband and the moments of bliss in the kids' eyes when they phantasize that their parents could be again together in love.

As in every family battleground the kids are the ultimate losers, without the mother realizing that her alienating behaviour sacrifices her only goal: her kids' happiness. The father, devastated by his continuous failure to link the family ties together, behaves in ways that he regrets and does not realize that it is this behaviour that leads to the withrawal of his wife. The film is very successful in showing this familiar downward spiral and the doomed destiny of a family caught in it.