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Avec amour et acharnement réal. par Claire Denis (review)

2023; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 97; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tfr.2023.a914241

2329-7131

Lucas Hollister,

Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning

Reviewed by: Avec amour et acharnement réal. par Claire Denis Lucas Hollister Denis, Claire, réal. Avec amour et acharnement. Int. Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin. Ad Vitam, 2022. The second collaboration between the director and the writer Christine Angot is a film about destructive feelings and relationships breaking down. Like Denis's other pandemic film, Stars at Noon (2022), this story's defining features are its emotional rawness and its depictions of characters in crisis acting in ways that inflict considerable damage on those in their orbits. In a manner vaguely reminiscent of Maurice Pialat's gut-wrenching Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972), Avec amour shows us the progressive disintegration of a relationship. Radio host Sarah (Juliette Binoche) and former rugby man Jean (Vincent Lindon) form an apparently happy couple, though Jean's status as an ex-con has hampered his career prospects and leaves him in a state of financial dependency. The balance of their lives is thrown fatally off kilter by the sudden reappearance of François (Grégoire Colin), Sarah's former lover and Jean's former business/criminal associate. While Avec amour is most obviously a romantic melodrama, it could also be classified a sort of sidewise crime drama that centers the moll rather than the men, or as an addiction film in which the illicit drug is a person rather than a substance. It is, indeed, to Denis's credit that whatever genre one chooses to read the film through, it will stand out as a subversive and challenging entry. The film opens with a scene of romantic harmony. Sarah and Jean swim in the ocean, displaying physical and emotional closeness. If, from a narrative standpoint, this represents a fairly conventional opening, establishing the contours of that "great good place" that the plot will bring to ruin, Denis's approach to the subject is anything but trite. Swapping shots above water and below, of surfaces and hidden depths, which are also, not incidentally, shots of the regions of the head (intellect) and genitals (desire), Denis establishes the fundamental tension that her film will explore. In the remainder of the film, which shows desire winning out until, as the last spoken words put it, "il n'y a plus rien," Denis alternates between controlled (intellectual) tracking shots and jagged (emotional) handheld shots. The soundtrack, by Denis's usual collaborators Tindersticks, is resolutely dour, not an accompaniment so much as a distinct element orienting our attention toward the moral gravity of the plot, and seems almost experimental at times in its interactions with the images. The acting also warrants mention, as Binoche plays Sarah as someone who cannot keep her feelings inside, whose surface offers no shield to her depth, while Lindon plays Jean as someone who struggles to let his feelings out and whose expressions of feeling bring him punishment rather than tenderness. While Binoche veers perilously close to overacting, to this viewer's eyes it stands as among her finest performances. A final word should also be said for the fine work done by Lilian Thuram and Mati Diop in small roles, and for Denis's oblique but firm insistence on the socio-political in this deeply intimate story. [End Page 115] Lucas Hollister Dartmouth College (NH) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French