Review of “Couers”
Walls feature prominently in veteran director Alain Resnais latest film Couers. They close in on an engaged couple Nicole (Laura Morante) and Dan (Lambert Wilson) and so they start looking for a bigger apartment. They pose a problem for their estate agent Thierry (Andre Dussollier), who has a thing for his co-worker Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) on the other side of the office partition. Charlotte, meanwhile, spends her nights caring for the terminal father of understanding barkeep Lionel (Pierre Arditi).
As these character’s lives intersect, however, it’s the metaphor walls that make for the interesting viewing. Dan and Nicole barely speak to each other any more, Dan choosing to open up to Lionel. Lionel cannot speak with his appallingly behaved bedridden father, but finds solace opening up to the anonymity of temporary carer Charlotte. Charlotte, good Christian that she is, opens up to everybody (in one of the films champagne comedy moments, one that pays off again and again throughout the film). Along with Thierry’s lonely hearts ad junkie sister Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré), these are six characters in search of not an author, but a connection. In re-working Alan Aykbourne’s play Private Fears in Public Places, and moving it from London to Paris in the dead of winter, Resnais keeps a certain stagey feel. His camera peers around and occasionally over the walls, and now and again takes interesting asides to peer at a cornice, or the wallpaper. And all throughout, the scene transitions are marked by snow falls, like the whole thing were taking place in a little snow globe.
The French Syndicate of Film Critics gave its Best Film gong to Resnais for this film, and it took the Silver Lion at Venice, and while this film is certainly enjoyable, I suspect the awards are more a tribute to the ongoing career of one of the darlings of the French New Wave than about this film in particular. I will say this for Resnais, at 85 the man has stamina. Personally, I would have cut, cut, cut some of the more stagey dialogue and tightened the film’s end (two hours feels like about 15 minutes too many by closing credits). The ensemble cast are all first class. This is a film about emotional connection, and we don’t always get it with the characters, but like overhearing a very private conversation at the table next to you in a restaurant, half the fun is piecing it together in your head.
CK
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