Emmanuel Mouret

[Red Screamer]

France. I saw it a while back but forgot to post about it.

[therewillbeblus]

France. I saw it a while back but forgot to post about it.

I was gonna say, 'should I move to Iowa?'

[therewillbeblus]

Chronique d'une liaison passagère

Macaigne and Kiberlain are both good and have the chemistry to create a relationship that’s interesting enough to sustain this chamber treatment. But this is really Macaigne’s film—his performance and Mouret’s staging do great things with body language—and the story is colored by his character’s perspective. That’s where I start to wonder if the film is too limited. Distance from both leads could have led to more fun with the episodic narrative and what the audience does and doesn’t know; Balancing the perspectives of both leads could have built a more in-depth portrait of the relationship and formed a different kind of progression or alternation among the film’s restricted elements. I was glad when Mouret threw us a minor curveball in the last third, which has a more-than-minor impact because of the way it moves the boundaries of the film that we’ve grown accustomed to.

I share your impressions of the film's general tone, restrictions, and place within Mouret's canon, but am pretty surprised to hear a declaration that the perspective is unbalanced towards one of the leads and not the other, especially if Macaigne is the answer! It is definitely limited, but that's because it's colored by neither perspective, just objective wide shots documenting the moments when they're together with impartially measured points of view, which is simultaneously composed of behavioral patterns signifying awkward withholding/alienating unknowability and the youthful bliss/sublime relief of the affair's function. They each dance around their feelings throughout, but I actually felt Kiberlain was the more interesting and complex character, while Macaigne is playing a watered-down version of many sensitive-neurotic Woody Allen/Mouret/Macaigne parts from past films. Her body language and minute gestures -including every slight movement made as she softly risks vulnerability and then retreats into guardedness when visiting his workplace, or when he brings up the coworker's unsolicited input to get a reaction- says so much without overstating anything. Meanwhile, his reactions are almost comically simplistic without any indication they are deeper than how they appear (i.e. he's uncomfortable that she showed up at his workplace because it invades a rigid boundary and he's an anxious person... okay, yep; or how he initiated that conversation about the coworker's advice and potential love brewing because he is both anxious- again- and maybe in love but too blind to know it and really just talking anxiously unfiltered, while her understated disposition indicates that she is shielding that she is torn over the idea of allowing herself to feel these feelings or to grapple with the possibility that she doesn't). The structure is limited by design but it's also fitting because we get these brief chapters that abruptly cut to the next without catharsis in the scenes, elusively passing by just like a memory or superfluous detail we may recall from a relationship or experiential fleeting elements of temporal staticity in a moment where we are truly present.

Even when they are apart, Mouret ensures that he grants them equity to their own individual reactions: they each encroach on the other's private environments once, and after the 'experiment', when Macaigne pauses in the hallway sensing something is happening, we also get a glimpse inside Kiberlain's apartment without Macaigne- only his face says nothing and her's implodes with unease, which is far more emotive and perplexing. And yet, three weeks later, Macaigne's naivete implies that he didn't actually do any processing with what made him stop on the staircase, while she did. I'm sorry- if anything, it's her perspective that's celebrated here, but both are so enigmatic precisely because they remain protective during their perceived liberated intimacy. It seems as if Mouret is getting more and more distance from characters representing himself as he churns out films, and that may be the quality I admired most about this one. Macaigne is resigned to a position no more pronounced or validated than Kiberlain's, even slightly. He gets called out for all of his subconscious attempts to engage in public self-pity or inhibited advocacy or humblebragging or groveling, framed from a removed position. I could buy a reading where this is all from Kiberlain's perspective -the person who instigated the affair (if Mouret wasn't interested in equity here, why not start with him approaching her at the aforementioned party to identify him as the surrogate subject? The film begins with her in the driver's seat) because she found these soft qualities of Macaigne attractive, and then we as an audience watch them fade in interest or merit right with her own retraction. It's quite sad, and a kind of brilliant critique Mouret is (intentionally or otherwise) making about himself or the male characters he creates.

I suppose it could be from Macaigne's perspective as he absorbs her presence livening up his banal existence, since everything that is compelling and novel comes from her and challenges him: We only hear her explore a fascinating concept of "nature" as he just twiddles his thumbs; she calls him out on his stupid story of a botched threesome and nakedly attacks his character for never taking chances without being aware of his own cowardice and ignorance. But if that's all from his perspective, it would entail his character being someone who made something of these things, rather than operate exactly as she calls it- as an avoidant, non-participant doomed to defensively slip back into delusion to play it safe and never really face or fight for what he's feeling (and I don't buy that the ending works as a reversal of this, only a half-hearted expression rooted in impulsivity that deflates back into an anxious-avoidant face-saving smooth-over disguised as self-actualization). Yeah, it doesn't add up. It's either a subtly self-reflexive evisceration of Mouret's characters from Kiberlain's perspective or just an objective portrait that's basically doing the exact same thing, just less creatively.

SpoilerShow

I did like how the final scene was filmed in shot-reverse-shot in contrast to the two shots making up the entire film before it- not only is it a clever implementation of form-inducing-theme exhibiting their disconnect, but it's a rare occasion where as a viewer I was conditioned to feel that shot-reverse-shot conversations look weird!

This one feels most indebted to Annie Hall, only without all the inventive bits that involve an eclectic cast of characters, places, and surreal satire that aided that film's charms. I still liked this a lot -even subpar Mouret is strong these days, but I too hope he returns to more intricate narrative and ensemble work next

[Red Screamer]

Good observations, you make a convincing argument. Though, to clarify, I didn’t mean the film was uncritical of Macaigne, more that its narrative beats and pivots from comedy to drama tend to shift with his character’s point of view.

SpoilerShow

Like with the threesome and the break-up. For example, when he goes to visit her after they break up, IIRC, we don’t see exactly what the cause and effect of her new life is for her, and we enter and leave the scene with him instead of the other way around. I could be misremembering though.

I actually just picked up the French blu of this (which has the zombie short, which is cute but not super substantial, plus a long interview with Mouret and the cinematographer—but unfortunately no English subs) and was hoping to rewatch soon. So thanks for giving me a few good things to think about when I do!

[therewillbeblus]

Good observations, you make a convincing argument. Though, to clarify, I didn’t mean the film was uncritical of Macaigne, more that its narrative beats and pivots from comedy to drama tend to shift with his character’s point of view.

Yeah I didn't interpret you to be saying that the film was uncritical of him, but my stream of consciousness writing just took me in a direction where following his point of view wouldn't gel with what we get, not only due to the formal equity but because the character doesn't engage in self-criticism that's empathized with any more thoroughly than Kiberlain's perspective. Mouret seems to be either critiquing the behavior of self-deprecation, or sympathetically documenting how spineless disengagement keeps one in a vulnerable and delusional space where they cannot bring themselves to reach out and access intimacy that might shed more light on each character.

SpoilerShow

I do think there's a decent argument there for this leaning a bit into Macaigne, but only because Kiberlain's more complex and expressive character is kept at bay due to his fearful inertia. Then again, she's playing an equal part here, so I'm not sure I would buy that reading, which would enforce a power differential in his favor. Nothing we're offered here indicates that there's a gendered imbalance or positioning that's any more complicated than her being the dominant one... except that he has his own 'person' outside of her, which is an interesting element to reflect upon, especially since he's the submissive role in every other respect, and this likely prompts her own life changes/pulling away.. Hmmm lots to think about!

SpoilerShow

Like with the threesome and the break-up. For example, when he goes to visit her after they break up, IIRC, we don’t see exactly what the cause and effect of her new life is for her, and we enter and leave the scene with him instead of the other way around. I could be misremembering though.

SpoilerShow

He does arrive first at the house, but I just took that as a shot to establish where we were and what was happening. The same thing might happen for either of them as they were waiting around in public for the other, or entering one another's places for the first times. When he leaves the house, the two women walk him out, he gets in his car and drives away, and then the camera lingers on Kiberlain's conflicted face for a long pause as her new partner goes back inside. So it seems like more formal equity - Mouret bookending the scene with contrasted images in the same context: First, Macaigne anxiously approaching a space as an isolated agent, and finishing with Kiberlain anxiously standing alone outside of the same space.

If we want to get analytical here, they are both outdoors, removed from the home that represents containment, safety, trust, communication, unable to breach the self-constructed barriers to be with one another. This makes me think about the whole returning theme of Kiberlain's broad definition of "nature" being inclusive of all man-created things: so they're physically outside in Macaigne's myopic idea of "nature" when the house can also be natural, just like them being in love would be natural. But neither will allow themselves to see this, so Kiberlain violates her own theoretical beliefs with emotional handicaps, remaining stuck in Macaigne's "nature" - not risking vulnerability to attain the infinite possibilities of love and harmony that exist in other spaces, whether the space of abstract love or being liberated into sharing physical space more fluidly together. The whole film is basically them putting in a lot of effort to finding physical spaces to fit their affection into, which -when they are able to comfortably, like in her apartment, leads to sublime flashes of affinity. And yet, if they each looked past their respective defenses, into their hearts and courageously acknowledged that their love is emblematic of Kiberlain's "nature", they may not need to try so hard. As the saying goes, "Freedom from, freedom to"

[Red Screamer]

Mouret reports in the latest issue of Cahiers that he has a new feature shooting this fall in Clermont-Ferrand (like My Night at Maud's, he notes). Called An Honest Woman, it follows the love lives of three different women, "alternating between light and serious sequences." Co-written with young filmmaker Carmen Leroi.

[domino harvey]

Mouret has made a zombie (!) themed short film reuniting him with Frederique Bel!

This was a one-note comic idea that unfolds about as you'd expect, but I am not unsusceptible to the pleasures of watching Frederique Bel ramble on in full neurotic mode while a zombie repeatedly almost eats her (even if her plastic surgeon went a bit Real Housewives on her...)