Just a Sigh (Le temps de l'aventure)

JUST A SIGH (Le temps de l'aventure)        B    
France  Belgium  Ireland  (105 mi)  2013  d:  Jérôme Bonnell

This is the kind of film that is stereotypically French, where one comes to assume that one of the favorite film subjects of the French is adultery and illicit love affairs, where this could just as easily have been called Love In the Afternoon, but both Billy Wilder (1957) and Eric Rohmer (1972) already nabbed that title.  Who knows where this sappy American title comes from, as the French version, The Time of the Adventure, has much more of a mysterious sounding allure.  Claire Denis’s FRIDAY NIGHT (2002), another variation on the same theme, gets directly to the point and may be considered a groundbreaking work, but this film about a sexual liason plays out more like an afternoon reverie, a daydream of wish fulfillment fantasy, where the kind of thing that never happens, by a strange act of fate, actually happens, with two strangers whose eyes meet on a train, always averting their looks, who speak just for a brief moment afterwards, only asking for directions, and then part, presumably fading into one of many forgotten moments in the course of any given day.  Written with actress Emmanuelle Devos in mind, she is in nearly every shot of the film and offers a tour-de-force performance, showing a great range of expression, much freer, more vulnerable, and funnier than we’re used to seeing her, where she’s the risk taker.  The object of her gaze is Gabriel Byrne, an Englishman whose name she never learns until the end, but his face remains a fixture in her imagination before running off to a rather wretched audition that leaves her feeling empty and dissatisfied with herself.  Having taken the early morning train from Calais to Paris, she’s expected back for an evening performance of Ibsen’s Lady from the Sea, where we see her walk onto the stage, but never see her perform in a play about having to choose between two men, which is essentially what this film is about as well, playing what amounts to a variation on a similar theme.     

The film has an exquisite classical structure, making great use of the music of Vivaldi and occasional sacred chorales from Verdi, which becomes equated with unspoken states of mind.  Devos plays Alix as a still attractive middle-aged woman continually frustrated at being unable to connect to her boyfriend’s cell phone, which is aways forwarded to voicemail, and with the pent-up energy from the disastrous audition, remains restless, and curiously wanders over to the location of the earlier overheard directions, which turns out to be a church where a funeral is taking place, where she easily blends into the crowd and discovers the face she saw on the train suddenly staring back at her with an astonishing look.  After the service, people gravitate to a nearby bar, where Alix has become the ear to nonstop chatter about the deceased from one of the well wishers (Gilles Privat), growing absurdly humorous as she has to continually pretend how well she knew the deceased, finally taking refuge on the sidewalk where she joins the handsome Englishman for a cigarette.  While there are multiple opportunities for each to go their separate ways, Alix is seen dawdling in front of his hotel, which, of course leads them both to take the plunge, becoming a sophisticated affair, where the bedroom conversation is quietly honest and unpretentious, but not without moments of humor, such as when Alix acts out what she does for a living.  While he is married with children, Alix remains unable to reach her boyfriend, continuing her feeling of disconnect.  Rather than immediately take the train back afterwards, she decides to visit her wealthy sister (Aurélia Petit), living in a lavish estate behind a locked iron gate, who presumes she’s there to borrow money, which she is, as her bank card failed at a cash machine.  This family visit turns into a full blown farce when the tone grows more and more condescending, eventually inspiring competitive jealousy and scene stealing theatrics from her sister that earns a bravado from Alix, as the scene was so spectacularly overplayed.  Afterwards, of course, she drifts back to the hotel.

Many will find this kind of rhapsodic adventure to be romantic, others might think it stereotypical, but it certainly becomes all too predictable after awhile, as the same theme is repeated throughout.  Much like Richard Linklater’s bustling romantic trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), the couple walks hand in hand through the streets of Paris where an international music festival is taking place, all of which adds kinetic energy and an immersion into a kind of unreal landscape, suddenly overflowing with party revelers all celebrating some mysterious event, which may as well be this romantic affair, becoming melodramatically overblown in order to sustain the level of interest throughout.  For all practical purposes, this remains Alix’s story and her adventure, where much like FRIDAY NIGHT (Vendredi Soir), it’s the portrait of a female protagonist who enters into an affair guilt free, as an act of personal liberation, a temporary means to rise above what feels like a stifling relationship with her own boyfriend (who we never see, but only hear on the phone).  Alix allows herself sexual expression as circumstances permit, as she never set out to seduce anyone, but allows herself to become involved in a kind of play acting, like a continuation of her morning audition, hoping to improve upon her performance.  In this way, instead of a typically male oriented fantasy, whatever erotic charge is what she puts into the moment, and Devos is wonderfully off balance throughout, providing a flair for lighthearted spontaneity and personal warmth, not to mention a healthy degree of curiosity, becoming as much about herself as whatever it is she hopes to discover.  It certainly rekindles a kind of passion that has been kept in reserve all too long, where the question becomes what does she intend to do with it, and with whom?  Perhaps due to language barriers, their dialogue throughout is in English, which is unusual to say the least in a French film, and may actually be a distraction, losing a degree of naturalness in her character.  Much of the overall experience is wordless, relying upon shifting atmospheric moods, where the film has an elegance about it, but feels strangely somber, never delving very deeply into either one’s character, knowing next to nothing about one another, which is perhaps the point, but then it never rises to a level of great heights and remains only a fantasy. 

House of Tolerance (L’Apollonide – souvenirs de la maison close)

HOUSE OF TOLERANCE (L’Apollonide – souvenirs de la maison close)    B+

aka:  House of Pleasures

France  (125 mi)  2011  d:  Bertrand Bonello

Stylistically, this is one of the more remarkable films of the year, beautifully shot by Josée Deshaies (the director's wife), where the French title is more appropriate, as souvenirs is a French expression for a remembrance or a memory, where perhaps the most exact usage here is a cinematic reverie, where the film has a remarkably lush decorative bordello environment, as champagne flows freely, a perfect compliment for the open display of naked female bodies which are prominently featured throughout this film.  There’s nothing remotely pornographic about this movie, as it rarely shows male anatomy, never aroused, and there are scant few shots of couples actually engaging in sex, and no sex is ever graphically revealed.  Instead, Bonello is more interested in the down time, in the type of activity that normally occurs offstage when they’re not working.  His camera is all over documentary style repetition of banal detail in showing the ordinary, day-to-day routines that the women follow, cleaning themselves and rinsing their mouths regularly, lorded over by the house Madame, Noémie Lvovsky, usually seen in lighthearted, dialog-driven French comedies, and a writer/director in her own right, where the rarely seen LIFE DOESN’T SCARE ME (1999) was one of the best films of the year.  Lvovsky, however, is exceptional in the smart yet manipulative way she understands the business, where the secret is to keep the girls incurring more debt to the house in costumes, clothes, perfume, and other refinements so they can never move elsewhere or obtain their freedom.  In this way, they are literally owned, the property of the house, a flesh and blood commodity to be used in a business transaction.  Very much in the exotic mode of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua) (1998), both historical pieces and both nearly entirely studio shot, where the deep richness of the plush interior colors are illuminated by candlelight, giving these films a rarely seen sensual opulence that overshadows the more deeply disturbing side of forgotten and discarded souls. 

Bonello’s interest lies in the suffocating treatment of women, where despite the everpresent titillation of the flesh, nothing that we see is the least bit sexually arousing.  In fact the audience is numbed by the desensitization of their dreary working lives, much like the monotonous routine of real life prostitution highlighted by Godard’s VIVRE SA VIE (1962), as despite the frequent repeating customer that asks for you, what you’re expected to endure, because the customer is paying for it, is filled with sexual humiliation and degradation, which is seen as part of the tools of the trade, something women are supposed to get used to.  Set in the waning months of the 19th century, one should recall child labor was prevalent, there were few opportunities for women, as this was the era of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which portrays a woman in a loveless marriage as a caged animal where all the power and rights belong to the husband, as he has a source of employment, effectively owning his wife as his own exclusive property, under the law, free to do with as he wishes.  Here, as in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s work, the filmmaker establishes the various character traits of the women, who and what they like, showing their habits and general tendencies so they become familiar to the audience. Bonello also accentuates the developing sisterhood between the women, who share the same harrowing fate, often seen lying listlessly and motionless in the precious few moments before they have to come to life for their customers.  One of the women of the house beautifully performs as a wind-up porcelain doll for her paying clientele.  In both films, the idea of a wealthy man buying their freedom and taking them out of prostitution for marriage is the ultimate dream, where many believe their beauty and dazzling sexual prowess will bring them what they desire, thinking they are more alluring than a continually deserted wife who doesn’t know how to fulfill her husband’s needs.  Perhaps the ultimate insult is the lie and continual betrayal of men who keep promising to leave their wives, but never do.  Left on their own without a wealthy benefactor, these women age and deteriorate quickly. 

While Bonello dwells on the demeaning internalized side effects of continually pretending to be something you’re not, constantly feigning happiness, he also shows the devastation once reality sets in, using a theme of a brutally treated woman who becomes horribly disfigured, but has noplace else to go, so works in the kitchen or as a maid, or helps dress and prepare the women.  In a rather macabre turn, her value as a grotesque object becomes a specialty item, a sexual novelty that interests the perverse and exotic interests of an aristocratic secret society, similar to Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), but as imagined by Diane Arbus.  What seems to set the wheels in motion for a steady downward descent is the mention by one of the regular house customers that recent scientific studies suggest prostitute’s brains, along with criminals, are decisively smaller than a normal brain, which accounts for their idiotic behavior.  Rather than the illusory beauty that opens the film with a rush of intoxication, naked flesh, and perfume, the filmmaker retraces the precious few moments before the brutal attack, adding a parallel story of shame from the deteriorating health by one of the women succumbing to syphilis, which at the time was incurable, accounting for the deaths of noted artists Franz Schubert and Édouard Manet.  The director shows no less than a thousand endings, and easily prolongs his movie, some may be a bit overdone, but each one adds another piece of the carefully constructed mosaic, becoming a lament for a forgotten era layered in the heartbreaking sadness of these women, perfectly expressed in one of the most haunting sequences set to the Moody Blues L'Apollonide Nights In White Satin - YouTube (2:59), a kind of vacuous last dance that eptimomizes their lost dreams slipping away.  Bonello reverses the brief whisp of hope offered by Nora’s freedom at the end of Ibsen’s play as an illusory phantom and leaves her stuck forever with no escape from A Doll’s House.  By the end, all the women characters inhabiting this film do look and feel a bit like glassy-eyed ghosts, lost and dispossessed souls with vacant looks emptied and disassociated from the real world. 

One should mention some of the featured actresses, all excellent, who let it all hang out for this film:  Samira, Hafsia Herzi from THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN (2007), Julie, Jasmine Trinca, the daughter in THE SON’S ROOM (2001), Clotilde (Céline Sallette), Léa (Adele Haenel), Madeleine (Alice Barnole), and Pauline (Iliana Zabeth), while two noted French directors are among the house regulars, Jacques Nolot as Maurice and Xavier Beauvois, who recently directed the acclaimed OF GODS AND MEN (2010).