Recommended: Someone I Loved
The 2009 film "Je l'aimais" (Someone I Loved) is now available on DVD.Daniel Auteuil plays a 60ish man, Pierre, who recounts the story of his love affair to his distraught, soon-to-be-ex-daughter-in-law, Chloe (played with weary misery by Florence Loiret Calle).
When Pierre
was in his 50s, he experienced a coup de foudre when he met Mathilde (Marie-Josée Croze) on a business trip to Hong Kong.Transformed by love and lust, he plans to leave his wife, Suzanne (Christiane Millet), to "finally feel alive". Pierre has been an appalling husband and father, buried in his work, so his defection doesn't appear to be such a loss to his family.
But then, confronted by several events, he wavers.
The scene t
hat moved me most was that between Suzanne and Pierre, in which she delivers an agonized yet underplayed indictment of their marriage.The film captures those unions characterized by coexistence without outright hostility, but little evident love.
Je l'aimais asks, Should property and propriety keep a couple together, or should one of them leave, to truly love? The story, told in flashbacks, spares no character his or her flaws and inconsistencies.
Auteuil is, as usual, superb at playing an everyman in too deep.
Of course, being a French film, you get to see quite a bit of the gorgeous Montreal actress Marie-Josée Croze ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and "The Barbarian Invasions"). I found her ardour for the stolid Pierre hard to believe, but "le cœur a ses raisons...".Mathilde would be any long-term partner's nightmare: alluring, accomplished and gunning for the full-time slot. But Croze's acting deftly subverts the usual clichés, offering a glimpse of steel beneath the wispy dress.
Tell me what you think!
Comments
Interestingly, in two books I've recently read, a young French women and her normally withdrawn father-in-law confide in each other . . . I'll be watching the film with some interest in how that relationship is depicted.
We just watched "Paris" over the weekend (recorded from one of the cable channels) with Juliette Binoche which was quite enjoyable.
I won't often speak of self about these things, and I'll be extremely general, but I have a long-distance "interest" who stayed too long in a dead marriage for the sake of their child, who is now an adult university graduate. Even after they separated, it has been very hard for him to give himself psychic permission to start life anew, though he is very fond of me.
No 20-year age difference, en passant!
I think, though this may change should the situation present itself, I would not want a partner to stay knowing he truly yearned to be elsewhere.
lagatta, that the other woman is younger is not just a reflection of what happens so often (and this taps into a fear many women have), but it is necessary to a twist of the plot- which I will not reveal!
All: The DVD is also for sale on eBay.
A DIL?FIL friendship begins when a FIL who has been a good parent extends this support to a new member of the family, And when a DIL wants this closeness.
s: Available at the Film Buff- I got it from the Queen/Greenwood location.