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Dostoevsky in Paris, post-Nouvelle Vague and post-May '68, the remarkable bookending glimpses of the suicide (balcony table tipping over, flower pot smashing, chair still rocking, car breaks screeching) set it up as a ghost story. The student (Dominique Sanda) and the pawnbroker (Guy Frangin), their marriage is another transaction in a material world. (Metal is what interests him in the crucifix she brings to the shop, he returns the plastic figurine.) "Do you read Goethe?" "Not very carefully." A signature and a ring summarize their wedding after she closes the door on his proposal, the honeymoon finds Formula One racers zipping noisily on the telly while the couple giggle under the sheets. Possessiveness poisons the union, "gentleness was replaced by defiance, revolt." Objects and their values, Robert Bresson's impeccable collection of vacant spaces and bodies, a hymn in honor of the alabaster corpse who used to enjoy books and records. The curious familiarity of a caged monkey in the zoo, the alien world of a cheerful costume romp at the Paramount Elysee. (A production of Hamlet does catch the heroine's eye, though, probably because she hears the director's voice in the Dane's advice to the players: "Acquire and beget a temperance.") Daisies picked and discarded, a green bar of soap on a checkerboard bathroom floor, the pistol out of the drawer and aimed at the jealous husband pretending to sleep. Belle de Jour is taken into account, La Femme Infidèle is concurrent. All creatures contain the same elements, it is observed of skeletons at the museum, the gulf between painting and cybernetic sculpture however remains. "I wanted to pray, but could only think." Release is a secret smile in the mirror, the soul drifts like a white scarf and everybody else is left to contemplate the nails on the coffin. Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet.
--- Fernando F. Croce |