La veuve de Saint-Pierre

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.

Juliette Binoche plays the wife of a military officer in a remote island town in 1849 Newfoundland who becomes devoted to the cause of saving the life of a condemned murderer. I was torn between admiring `The Widow of Saint-Pierre' for not taking the obvious route of having the captain's wife fall in love with her protege and run off with him (e.g., `Mrs. Soffel"), and a feeling of letdown that it was avoiding opportunities for more vivid and realistic drama. That there is an attraction between the two is made clear, especially in the highly charged, yet muted eroticism of the reading lesson scene. This film was based on a true story, but I couldn't help wondering if the actual killer was as saintly and devoid of guile as he seems in this movie. Among other things, he resists his attraction to his benefactress, although she would probably be more than willing to sleep with him, saves the life of a village woman whose house has slipped its moorings, and passes up an excellent chance to escape because he doesn't want to get anybody in trouble. He impregnates another woman, although it appears to be true love, and he then does the decent thing and marries her. One could accept that a criminal could be redeemed, but here he's a little too good to be true, reinforcing my suspicion that the characterization was meant more to reinforce the filmakers' anti-capital punishment stance than as a reflection of his actual personality. Daniel Auteil as her husband is stuck playing a character whose emotions remain largely inscrutable. The film would have us believe that there is no jealousy or resentment in the husband as his wife dedicates her life to rehabilitating and saving the condemned man under his charge. Ultimately, the captain gives up his own life for both of them, but I kept waiting for a significant sign that he had some inner conflict about doing so. After all, he is a career military officer sworn to uphold the law as it is. Who knew that underneath he was a bleeding heart liberal! This film is interesting and absorbing up to a point, but ultimately, it's also bland and overly complacent dramatically.

The actions of two men on a drunken spree turns out to be fatal for the man who is being harassed because he dies as a consequence of a fight with his two tormentors. Both men are apprehended and condemned to die as punishment for their actions. The way to die is beheading by guillotine, or "the widow" in the vernacular.

Thus begins this story that director Patrice Leconte directed, based on the screen play by Claude Faraldo. The story is set in the remote island of Saint Pierre, off the coast of Newfoundland. This is a hostile environment settled by the French. Saint Pierre boasts a lot of widows who have survived the rigors of the climate and the hard lives their husbands led.

Into this milieu we find a military captain and his wife. Both are Parisians and appear to be compassionate, at heart. When Neel, the surviving drunk is brought to be kept in a cell within the military quarters of the island, the wife, Madame La, takes an interest in the man. With her husband's consent, she asks for his help in tending a green house in the premises and other errands.

Neel and Madame La are at simple view, just opposites. The kindness Neel sees in her, transforms him. Madame La even goes to help him learn to read. All these actions don't sit well with the rest of the inhabitants and the people in the government who demand a guillotine is sent over and have him execute the prisoner.

The film works because the brilliant performance of Juliette Binoche, who as Madame La, makes her mark in the picture. Her compassion for Neel is genuine; in her heart she believes this man, a product of the environment in which he was born, shows qualities that no one has seen in him.

Emir Kusturica, a noted film director himself, is also one of the assets of the movie. Mr. Kusturica is a large man with unkempt looks, who is totally believable as Neel. His interaction with Madame La turns from gratitude into a noble love that is not meant to be.

The other principal is Daniel Auteuil who is perfect as the captain, the husband of Madame La, who is outraged by what he perceives to be the wrong punishment for the accused Neel. In spite of the menacing presence of Neel next to his wife, he trusts her as he knows her kind heart belongs to him only.

"La veuve de Saint Pierre" is a great movie that will satisfy viewers in search of a different story. Patrice Leconte has directed with panache as he takes us to see the beauty of Saint Pierre, something that is so bleak, yet it's a place that has a magnetic attraction as we watch the film unfold.

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!

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!