Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/25/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, April 25, 2025

Perfect Love (Catherine Breillat, 1996)

Francis Renaud and Isabelle Renauld in Perfect Love

Cast: Isabelle Renauld, Francis Renaud, Laura Saglio, Alain Soral, Michèle Rème, Alice Mitterand, Tom Rocheteau, Delphine De Malherbe, Marie Lebée. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Laurent Dailland. Production design: Françoise Dupertuis. Film editor: Agnès Guillemot.

Catherine Breillat is a kind of anti-pornographer; her films are almost enough to turn one off from sex entirely. Or anyway, from any notion that sex is an expression of, as the title ironically suggests, Perfect Love. Breillat often seems to suggest that we are just animals trying to dress up our instincts with highfalutin labels. That occurred to me during the scene in which the naked Christophe (Francis Renaud) gets out of the bed he's sharing with Frédérique (Isabelle Renauld) and, for reasons known only to him, climbs the scaffolding outside her window. He looks like a particularly awkward monkey, and he inspires neither passion nor amusement in Frédérique, but rather deepens the contempt that's growing in her. The growth in their mutual alienation is the subject of the film, which begins in the aftermath of Christophe's unspeakable assault on and murder of Frédérique. The plot is simply a flashback that shows how their relationship developed and disintegrated so horribly. Of course, being French, they talk about it at length, narrating their own disaffection. I found it a curious misfire, a movie that's based in part on the disparity in their ages -- she is supposed to be a generation older, a twice-married woman with two children, including a daughter somewhat closer in age to Christophe than she is. Yet the actors cast as Christophe and Frédérique were born only a year apart; both were in their late 20s when the film was made, and they look it. I can respect Breillat's attempt at portraying the difficulties of a relationship and admire the commitment of her performers, but nothing in the characters seemed to justify the outcome. Nor can I deny the boredom that settled on me as the film proceeded.