Art and Chaos Day

A Review of Maurice Pialat's A Nos Amours

Pardon me for using one of the oldest of cliches, but A Nos Amours is a film one will either love or hate. At worst it will spread fear into the hearts of all of those who have or will eventually have teenage daughters. At best, it will foster a discuss as to the true nature of love and what inspires it. It begs the question: to what extent do our parents influence the nature of whomever we are attracted?

In her first screen role, Sandrine Bonnaire, (Suzanne) plays a nihilistic, sexually active sixteen-year-old who is incapable, it seems, of feeling love or compassion for anyone who truly loves her. She sleeps with a modicum of young men she meets at summer camp, at parties, at coffee bars, and on roadsides. This is likely to blame for her dysfunctional upbringing. Both parents are lower middle class artisans. Her home life is chaotic--fraught with physically and emotionally violent conflict between all family members. Love/hate might typify best the interaction between all family members. A gentle touch is quickly followed by a harsh word or painful backhanded slap.

But above all, Suzanne, seems desperate for love and acceptance from her absentee father who leaves the family early in the action. Her mother, a neurotic basket-case, emotionally overwrought and over-the-top, envies her daughter's beauty and freedom. Any sort of mother-daughter affections are muted and paradoxical, to say the least. Her brother's violent nature barely obscures a incestuous jealousy of whomever Suzanne's latest paramour might be. He is the stereotypical overweight oaf of a man whose jealous nature obscures his own deep insecurities regarding his physical ugliness.

She sleeps with whomever she wishes, but with along the obligatory French flair for stoic pessimism, she feels nothing but contempt for those whom she takes into bed with her. Those who wish to find some sort of deeper meaning in her actions will find themselves greatly disappointed. The film shows us, rather than tells us much of what transgresses. It's up to the audience to determine the exact meaning behind Suzanne's actions.

Clearly, she is bereft of the ability to feel real love for anyone other than her father, who leaves mid-movie, only to return at the film's climatic ending. Any sense of tenderness from a strictly romantic standpoint exists only between father and daughter.

The film has a disjointed, highly chaotic narrative style that will only frustrated those who long for some sense of coherent plot, foreshadowing, and other narrative techniques for which Pialat refuses to include within his film. It has been noted that the film attempts to incorporate the physicality and framing of silent film within the context of the sound medium. It is poetic cinematography, through and through, and like all poems draws no firm conclusions for the audience.

The reviewer finds himself deeply ambivalent as to rating the quality of this film. It will either try one's patience or scares one senseless and potentially both. The ironic nature of this film is that, though twenty-three years old, if prefaces the hook-up culture of which I mentioned a few entries back. That an obscure French art film could pick up on undercurrents of society is either a stroke of genius or the musings of an eccentric, cantankerous old man. As with everything else about this film, the audience must be the final judge.