Alain Resnais, who was born in 1922, directed three of the legendarily dense and much argued-about classics of the French New Wave: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Muriel (1963), followed by quite serious historical explorations as La Guerre est finie (1966), Stavisky (1974), and (in English) the Pinteresque Providence (1977). I saw the colorful revival of French musical hall fare of “The Same Old Song“ (On connait la chanson) at the San Francisco International Film Festival a decade ago, so was prepared for a look far more Jacque Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) than Hiroshima/Marienbad.

The French title of his 2006 film is “Coeurs“ (hearts), though the DVD reverts to the title of the play by Sir Alan Ayckbourn on which it was based: “Private Fears in Public Places.” The characters who are diffident in pretty distinctly British ways have been sped through the Chunnel and deposited in Paris. There are six characters in the color-saturated Parisian locales, five of whom are seeking love—or at least connection to someone of the opposite sex.

Some viewers think that the sixth, Lionel (Pierre Arditi), bartender at a hotel bar that seems to have been designed with very 1960s or 70s vision of modernity/futurity (like the future of Kubrick’s �”), is diffidently hoping to be considered as a partner for the part-time Bible-reading night nurse, Charlotte (Sabine Azéma), who deals with Lionel’s foul-mouthed and bed-ridden father (who is never shown, but is definitely heard from), but I think that Lionel is gay and that the love of his life is dead.

At the bar, Lionel politely listens to Dan (Lambert Wilson [Catwoman]), a career military officer who has been cashiered for some unspecified misdeeds committed by those he commands. Dan has no job and must have a very large bar tab, as he throws down a lot of Scotch. (He does not seem like a French soldier to me!)

At the start, Dan and his fiancée Nicole (Laura Morante) are seeking a three-room apartment. Their realtor, Thierry (André Dussollier) is having difficulty finding a property that suits them. He works in a very glassy office, opening to the outdoors (where it is snowing throughout the movie; for that matter, it is snowing indoors in at least one scene), with Charlotte.

Charlotte lends Thierry some videotapes of a Sunday evening program in which various celebrities play their favorite songs. She seems to have taped over camcording of herself doing bumps and grinds, so that after each program’s hymns there is homemade softcore porn. Thierry is unsure what Charlotte is signaling. Indeed, the viewer is quite uncertain what her intentions are. No attempt to explain her mixture of Puritanism and prurience occurs.

And, finally Thierry’s quite beautiful sister Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) is pretending to be “out with girls” every evening, when in fact she is trying to find love on the Internet and meeting men, one of whom is Dan (“taking a break”) from Nicole. It is amazing that someone so beautiful is so lacking in beaus and has to wear a flower to be identified in the coffeehouse, where she arrange to meet potential matches—and is stood up!

Love does not come easy or often in the brightly-colored City of Love of this film. Indeed, it seems at least as difficult as in Hiroshima or Marienbad!

The small number of characters trying without much success to communicate might make the adaptation of a stageplay sound stagey. The scenes—mostly of two people, sometimes of three—are intercut extensively. The sets are quite distinct from each other, and the brevity of takes provides movement—even though all the stories are about lonely people making less-than-bold attempts to connect. I don’t recall low-angle shots, but there are many high-angle one (crane shots of interiors, that is).

Along with too much snow (for each and every transition, plus falling outside the real estate office and not melting on coats of those who have been outside), there’s too much of Dan for me. I find him quite unsympathetic, siding easily with Nicole and later with Gaëlle. Perhaps it is a sign of age that I am far more sympathetic to the older men, Lionel and Theirry, though they are very polite and very concerned about causing pain to anyone. Charlotte is a puzzle, and Nicole has little screen time.

I guess that the film is Resnais’s A Winter’s Tale. I don’t find it at all profound, but it is well-acted, with a definite look (brought off by Eric Gautier's cinematography).

I would have liked to hear about the project from Resnais (whose second film based on material by Alan Ayckbourn this is (“Smoking/Not Smoking” for which Arditi won a 1993 César and Azéma was nominated, was the first) or from Arditi, who has also appeared in Resnais’s “Mon oncle d'Amérique” (1980), as well as with Azéma in “Same Old Song” (1997) and “Not on the Lips” (2003. The only DVD extras are trailers for Penelope, My Best Friend, After the Wedding, Snow Cake, and Russian Dolls, alas.


© 2007, Stephen O. Murray

Not great, this still seems a good movie by an established master for CaptainD's good movie writeoff. And arguments could be made for the movie being both “endearingly English” (the characters seem English in their reticences and their vices) and a “French find” if Barbara’s writeoff is still open.






Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD