'Chronicle of an ephemeral love': the light depth of adultery with echoes of Woody Allen and Sacha Guitry

The things we say, the things we do

made us happy in the difficult film summer of 2021. In love and desire —which may or may not be the same, shaking hands or smacking each other—, whether in relationships or in adulteresses, with not a few shades of gray depending on how much truth or imposture there is in them, one usually falls into verbiage.

We say that we do or are going to do many things, but then indolence, fragility, fear, memory, inexperience, shyness and even the inconceivable makes us fall for the cherry.

Our strength is running out of our mouths, Emmanuel Mouret came to tell us in his pompous and graceful romantic film.

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Emmanuel Mouret, a Rohmer for the 21st century

Two years later,

comes to confirm some issues and to complete a panorama of infidelity in which the tone and staging are as relevant as the word, which, as usual in his cinema, does not stop still.

Here we talk and talk, with the novelty that in his new work there are only two characters: an adulterous couple for whom we would not put a euro in a betting house about their happy future, but who, with their incomprehensible and irresistible Power of seduction based on difference, or beyond, almost on antagonism, it becomes perfect thanks to the force of lightness.

Because it is the tone that ends up configuring what is essential in Mouret's work.

The lightness of a part of

has completely buried its ambitions, its gravity, its affectation.

Here one arrives at depth only from lightness.

"The perfect extramarital relationship is sexual," it is said in

Moments of pleasure without any ties.

He, married with children, starts out quite unbearable and in the end you would take him home.

Ugly, clumsy, indecisive.

A normal person, like you and me.

She, separated and also with children, is determined, spontaneous, free.

A woman of today, perhaps.

And in the film everything that is not them is left out: children, friends, current or past partners.

These are talked about, but they never come out;

they only matter as an invisible and irrelevant courtship of a relationship that is going to more.

Because it is left out, even sex is always outside the image, with elegant, precious ellipses, composed together with transitions between sequences, almost musical interludes, in which Handel, Mozart and Shostakovich sound, alongside French classics such as Juliette. Greco, Serge Gainsbourg, and Jane Birkin.

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He is played with grace, sweetness, silliness and sadness by Vincent Macaigne, who looks like he just stepped out of a Woody Allen movie.

In fact, he could be Woody.

She is played with self-confidence, insolence, tenderness and pain by the veteran Sandrine Kiberlain, who could also be Diane Keaton in an Allen story.

And yet, despite the similarities with

and some other title from the master of transcendent lightness, there is a reference that fits her even better.

And it is not Éric Rohmer, as much as there are other critics who name him, because for this time the author of the

despite his similarities, which he also has, gives way to the great name to claim with

Sacha Guitry, a director unfortunately forgotten or unknown by most of the new generations of moviegoers and specialists.

This narration based on almost independent vignettes, which are added to a free and unprejudiced, humorous and intense set, is that of the author of the wonderful

(1937),

(1939),

(1951) and

(1957), extraordinary light comedies about loving relationships, in which Moret looks to portray the often absurd redoubt of love.

“I was afraid of turning your life upside down,” she says.

"We are going to enjoy ourselves without thinking about the future," they both conclude.

The furtive encounters of two vulgar, ordinary people who desire and shelter each other, filmed by Mouret with the intelligence of one who seems to be portraying a trifle.

Chronicle of an ephemeral love

Direction:

Emmanuel Mouret.

Cast:

Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Macaigne, Georgia Scalliet. 

Genre:

comedy.

France, 2022.

Duration:

100 minutes.

Premiere: March 24.

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