Ah Luis Malle, you almost got me to take that beautiful bourgeois housewife played by Jeanne Moreau and her boredom for more than it was worth.

As are most of Louis Malle’s works, The Lovers was wildly stylish and very crisply shot, but it lacked a great deal of sincerity and (in the least) melancholy that could have suited the leading lady well.

Really, the first hour of this film is a complete loss as far as I am concerned, albeit necessary in order to get to the only taut meat of the story, the only real beauty.

Alright, Jeanne (the bodacious, bored wife of Henri who is the editor of what we are all supposed to assume is an important newspaper) seems to love her daughter (whom we rarely see which makes me worry about her as her parents never seem to be around) and tolerate her husband, but more than anything loves the freedom of his lack of care for her. So she does what most bored, suburban housewives do: she flocks to the nearest metropolitan city (in her case Paris) and wastes time with single, self-indulgent people. She picks up a lover of sorts, Raoul, and although she starts to increase the time and length of her trips to Paris after meeting him, it all seems for naught; does she really even care about Raoul or his affections for her?

And really, who cares? The only reason to wonder is because you want the film to go somewhere. Luckily, and eventually, it does. Through a series of poor judgements, she meets Bernard, wherein the title of the film becomes literal as opposed to ironic.

With Bernard, Jeanne rapidly experiences what I only hope all of you will; a burst of disregard for consequence and uncertainty and unrealism in the name of sudden-love. The moments shared between Jeanne and Bernard are (literally) quite beautiful, with the kind of corny love-poem syntax that, by the time this all happens and the film viewer can get over the first hour of the film, one will actually greet gleefully.

Where will the two go? How long will it last? These are questions that matter, of course, but comparable to life, we cannot just expect to have the answers handed to us. Jeanne and Bernard will find their way or they won’t, and only the ferocity of their love-burst will be able to dictate how long this journey really lasts. I just wish there was more time for us to all explore this with them.

director: Louis Malle

language: French

length: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

where to watch: Hulu (Plus)

“I have time. Please devour me.”

And this one will feel, and will be a feeling ultimately surrendered to as Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour quite lyrically unfolds.

The film opens to what I can only describe as a poetically composed assortment of images, those who either draw us into what seems to be bodies and arms entangled, in sorrow or passion one cannot yet know. Then a montage, and what feels like a tour through a city, Hiroshima, that the female protagonist describes as a city made for this kind of love or falling into love. A tour yes, but one that happens after one’s feet have magically and subtlety left the ground and buildings and people and passageways surround you as you float into it. Through it.

“How slow all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot know.”

It is the story of two people from very different worlds and very different understandings or connections to the nuclear atrocity of 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a focus on Hiroshima (as the title indicates). The juxtaposition of imagery in the first 15 minutes, and the last, are truly beautiful. A man and a woman try to navigate the complexities of heartbreak (both real and potential) years after of an event that ultimately brought them together. There is something so genuine about the struggle to accept what could be an absolute love, and how it is shown in this film. The kind of love that cannot be planned for or expected. These characters meet and of course, what passion they engage in in one night, extends past that and becomes a game of denial and emotional turmoil. Especially for the woman (whose past we find out much more about, I suppose because she is french coming into this “foreign” territory to be apart of a film about Peace in regard to Hiroshima). 

The man, one who is from Japan, seems at first skeptical of the woman and the reasons she has for being here. Asking her where she was when Hiroshima happened, and how he french felt when it did, if they felt that had taught the japanese some lesson before they realized what horror had actually been committed to 100s of thousands of innocent people. There is a moment in the film where it seems, although he is slowly started to care for her, he finds ways to defy that inner feeling. She makes a point to say “you french is so good”, and he says, “I decided not to notice that you spoke no japanese. We notice what we want to notice, and ignore what we do not want to.” It, for me at least, showed the resentment that comes in loving someone different for yourself, in the initial stage of care, it seems one tried to find fault in the other before the love just becomes too great.

It’s an intense film, with emotionally vivid and incredibly honest shots & monologues, and circumstances worth debating or hashing over with another cinpehile. And if you’re lucky, perhaps with the cinephile you love, someone who can share the same kind of unabashed look into cinematic expression we sometimes call the lover’s heart.

director: Alain Resnais

language: French, Japanese

length: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

where to watch: rental

Director Krzysztof Kieślowski manages to create in a mere 98 minutes one of the most distantly moving, beautifully choreographed films of my time.

From the moment the Double Life of Veronique begins, there is the sense that you are being given something, bit only scarcely. Something that will feel altogether personal, yet beyond yourself. Like you are here, and there, at the same time.

This film made me feel so much, and the sweeping score, composed by Zbigniew Preisner, is one that greatly impacts on the scale that should be expected from any film to be looked at as a modern art house masterpiece.

The fear of being and not being alone in this world is one major theme quietly and beautifully explored in; this is what Kieślowski’s Red should have been (for those of you familiar with his Three Colors trilogy). Irene Jacob takes on her role with an ease of emotional output that one is hard pressed to find (but not surprisingly so in french cinema). Like with the Three Colors series, juxtaposed are a Polish life, and a French life (undoubtedly due to the directors own geographical history), and what Irène is able to relay to us between these two worlds, between these two, slowly unraveled understandings of a world, a feeling, and an unconscious perception of present connection is breathtaking.

The color scheme and tone are very similar to his series, you will feel warm tones no matter how dark the circumstance, though lighting and music become very, very key instruments of foreshadowing or continuity. There is like an orchestra embedded into our brains as the film plays out, there are just certain details that he will not let us loose sight of, although stealthily.

This is cinematographically the equivalent to black gold; Kieślowski is definitely a fan of shots from the neck up and heavy on the thinking room up top, but the way in which the camera moves around her.. Yes there are the standard framed shots: this is who’s talking, now he’s talking, now she’s looking at this. But there is something about the fluidity of the camera, essentially our window into her life, that is absolutely an extension of that feeling we get (and ultimately share with the character); that we are both here, and there. We are living separately, simultaneously. Is this not true of our own day to day lives?

For the cinephile that looks at, say, Cléo de 5 a 7 or Vivre sa Vie, or the Silence (or most early Bergman, just to be specific) and thinks that only these waves in france or sweden or wherever, in the 50s, 60s, and prior even, are the sole source of cinematic excellence; for the cinephile who thinks of the 90s and what comes to mind are things like The Craft and Stealing Beauty (not to discount either and serving their purpose within pop-culture and the psyche of the 90s); please pay heade to what Kieślowski has accomplished, and what he has ultimately bestowed to us all. 

As far as I, the ever emotionally isolated, am concerned, The Double Life of Veronique, gives me the opportunity to explore (in cinematic security) the ostracizing, and yet comforting concept of where one stands in this world, on this earth, as a being. Whether that be alone, together, here, there, or everywhere, all at once.

director: Krzysztof Kieślowsk

language: Polish, French

length: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

where to watch: rental