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PostPosted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:54 pm 
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EMMANUEL MOURET: LOVE AFFAIR(S)/LES CHOSES QU'ON DIT, LES CHOSES QU'ON FAIT (2020) - RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2021

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NIELS SCHNEIDER, GUILLAUME GOUIX IN LOVE AFFAIR(S]

Mouret's Shall We Kiss?/Un baiser si'l vous plaît
was featured in the 2008 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, when I cited Derek Elley of Variety saying the director was a combination of Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer. Here, some of the delicacy is still there; it's shown in its use of Vincent Macaigne and Niels Schneider. The three women are fine. But Mouret's mastery has taken him too far this time. He's working at such a high pitch now, with so many couples coming and going and so much well-chosen classical music from Chopin to Italian opera, that this movie is a bit indigestible. You get lost in it more than once. It's not just me: Even the French critic of Les Fiches du Cinema quoted in AlloCiné, for instance, says it's "difficult to savor the brilliant dialogue. . . under the constraint of the rapid pacing." He adds something I'd not thought of: that "the actors' restrained acting doesn't help." Many viewers find it all too pretentious and overwrought. That's not the Emmanuel Mouret I was so taken by 13 years ago.

It probably is true that many in the cast do downplay, and this robs the film of a comic element one feels surely is meant to be there, but gets lost in the love-longing and false moralist stubbornness of the ladies who refuse to grant their favors sometimes when you know they want to. It's a droll twist to saddle the dreamy Niels Schneider, still notable and compulsively watchable here, with inappropriate casting as a perpetual loveless loser while making the geeky Vincent Macaigne into an apparent success with both wife and mistress and, presumably, job as well, since he lives in splendid digs with grand tapestries, furniture, and paintings. A number of French spectators on AlloCiné, not as thrilled as the critics, saw the plot complications as tedious "Marivaudages" (plot twists of theatrical farce) and the wealthy Parisian "bobo" settings and the formalized, elaborate talk out of touch with reality.

What's to like? Well, the acting is interesting and able at times anyway, and the two main women characters, Louise played by Emilie Duquesne and, especially, the statuesque Daphné played by Camélia Jordana, are very watchable. Everyone is watchable, including the actor playing Gaspard, Guillaume Gouix, who's the only one whose scenes have a broad comical flavor. The ceaseless classical excerpts certainly often do exactly what they're supposed to do to underline the sense of a scene, but are a bit overwhelming and ultimately cloying, like everything else. Some French critics (and viewers) feel that Mouret's great success in 2019 with his more mainstream costume film Mademoiselle de Joncquières (which was well received, but I found somewhat lacking) may have given him too much of a swelled head. I don't know, but that might be true.

This is one of the most celebrated of 2021's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema films, also one of the longest and over two hours. It's nominated for 13 Césars (the awards come in three days from now), and its critics' rating on AlloCiné is 4.3/5 or 86%. But one cannot enjoy what one cannot follow.

Love Affair(s) / Les Choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait, 120 mins., was a Cannes 2020 official selection released on the internet Jun. 26, 2020, and showed in about eight other international festivals including Busan, Tokyo, Thessaloniki and Stockholm. Screened online at home for this review as part of the 2021 all virtual UniFrance-Film at Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Mar. 9, 2021.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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