Cet Amour-La
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C Film: B-
The great Jeanne Moreau plays the famous writer Marguerite
Duras during her final years, which includes a serious relationship with a
23-year-old man in Josée Dayan’s Cet Amour-La, a recent drama from
2000. Yann (Aymeric Demarigny) is that
young man who has been writing her for half a decade. Suddenly, she agrees to meet him. What follows is a surprising whirlwind that sees her into her
final days.
No film since Hal Ashby’s Harold & Maude (1972)
has dealt with such a relationship with such sincerity and honesty, but this
film is less comic and more interested in exploring the couple’s connection
through literature and seeing life on a larger scale. Though the film is predictable and not as quirky as Ashby’s
classic, it still has its moments and the leads have enough chemistry to make
us believe their connection. It is
filled with some loneliness and the realization of that state is handled with intelligence
and honesty. As for Moreau, you believe
she is more Duras than Moreau and that is why this film just adds to her
greatness as maybe the most important actress in French cinema history.
Needless to say a film like this would be ignored in the
U.S. for false moral and other pretentious reasons. However, it is the kind of film that is long overdue on DVD and
is definitely worth your time.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 x 1 image has some
slightly weak Video Black and detail limits, but Caroline Champetier’s
cinematography is good and she knows how to use the scope frame. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic
surrounds and is nicely recorded, including the fine score by the
always-impressive Angelo Badalamenti.
Extras include trailers for this and a few other New Yorker DVDs, plus a
nearly half-hour featurette about the making of the film.
- Nicholas Sheffo
