Guermantes

Every Christophe Honoré movie promises something singular, something intelligent, and something fantastic. Guermantes is no exception. This film arose from Covid's effects on Paris and his current production, an adaptation of Proust's Le Côté de Guermantes. The play was shut down because of Covid restrictions--Paris followed the rest of the world with its closures and curfews--after one or two performances (I believe).

Honoré and his cast were left with the choice of waiting until the climate changed and restrictions were removed so they might again perform or they could make art from the ruins. Honoré always moves between media--from novel to play to opera to film--so making a movie was easy. Guermantes tells this story by contrasting the theatre repertoire members' lives with the tales of Proust. Guermantes is a mirror into various tales during the modern-day plague eventually to post-confinement while Proust proudly smiles over everything.

There are no perfect endings, but happiness hangs above everything else here. Original and earmarked by Honoré's signature wit and talent.

The previous review mentions that the UK avoided Guermantes, but the truth is that the movie was never distributed outside of France. There was never a digital release, and Honoré kept it as a television movie, as respected as it is. I was fortunate enough to contact a streaming service who added it to their menu with English subtitles, and I was lucky to watch it several times. I am uncertain how other parts of the world can access Guermantes.

In the UK this film is to my knowledge unknown, or avoided. It is a hymn to life during the appalling pandemic that hit the world in 2020. This film shows how a group pf actors who practically live in the theatre where they are rehearing ' Guermantes ' a play based on part of Marcel Proust's ' In Search of Lost Time. ' During two hours and twenty minutes we see them rehearse, relax, sleep and love each other despite the fact that the play could not be put on due to lockdown. Their devotion to each other is incredible to watch, and there is a scene where an elderly woman is dying in bed which surpassed for me a similar scene in Ingmar Bergman's ' Cries and Whispers.' Both homosexuality and heterosexuality intermingle as they should in ' real ' life and at one point there is an astute comparison with the pandemic of the 1980's where so many died of another world wide pandemic. There are scenes of a semi-deserted Paris that for me was heart breaking to see. I urgently feel that this film deserves the distribution it should have beyond the confines of France and perhaps other countries with less indifference to Christophe Honore's work and arguably his most committed film.

Personally, as I myself had dipped my toe in the theatre, I enjoyed this film a lot.

The given time and set-up is particular - under the Covid lock-down and a production cancelled mid-rehearsal -, but the film is not much about the story or drama but the actors, the commune of Comedie Francaise.

The general society tend to view actors with somewhat dubious eyes. Unless you become rich and famous, an actor is often perceived as bit of a clown, bit crazy, untrustworthy (because they can just 'fake' it), a Bohemian vagabond who refuses to become a responsible grown-up of the society. Regardless, an actor has to view and live life differently. To be able to capture and express the essence of truth (whether it be of the drama or the character), an actor has to remain sensitive and sometimes brutally honest even about the uglier side of human nature. Unlike philosophers, psychiatrist or doctors, who arguably have deeper and more constructed knowledge of humans in their given area, an actor has to embody what they know and feel, because an actor's job is in action and expression not in ideas, words or visions.

For that reason, it is crucial for an actor to have the fellow troop as the comrades and the theatre as their world. The fellow actors become their family and lovers and the theatre (Beyond the marbled foyer, velvet covered auditorium and the glitzy stage, the dark dusty backstage, narrow passage ways and the dingy waiting room) their world. There have been some films about what happens behind theatre productions, but I don't think any of them captured this 'world of their own' aspect as richly as 'Guermantes' does. The level of intimacy and nonchalance they treat each other, carefreely taking up every corner of the theatre as their home, the incredibly physical nature of their interaction (most people would experience it only in sexual context), all the ups and downs during a rehearsal - the struggle to learn new lines, occasional nervous break down when the task is overwhelming, the sense of freedom when one finally gets to inhabit the character... Then there are also the reality - the pressure for the next role, the director feeling bit alienated in the world dominated by actors, and the real world outside their fragile universe they can't ignore in the form of failed relationship or new romance. It's all there seemingly as a bunch of snippets, but as a whole it forms the big picture of the life in theatre.

I just don't know how the general public with no regards to or experience in the theatre would view this film. Probably just heady bunch of gibberish about self-indulgent crazy theatre people. But I can't help myself but embrace this film with an affection as an ode to the theatre people... those crazy people, who can still light up a little magic, even, as in the last scene, when their little world -theatre- locks them out and they end up on park benches.