Re: The 1983 Mini-List
Posted: Fri May 31, 2024 7:27 am
Coup de foudre (Diane Kurys)
The story is based on the actual life of director Kurys’ mother but it’s not a biopic. At the core this is a critique of women’s position in marriages. Getting married (for a woman at the time) was often required simply to survive rather than something she would do out of love. When the mother (Huppert) has her first orgasm after 10 years of marriage it’s not with her husband. There are some subtle lesbian connotations in the film towards her friend Miou-Miou. Guy Marchand, the husband, actually says “it’s plain as a day” (the lesbianism) so maybe it’s not so subtle, I don’t know. Coup de foudre was a relatively large success: the 2nd largest box-office hit in France of the entire 1980’s directed by a female: 1.6M admissions, only bettered by Coline Serreau’s Trois hommes et un couffin selling 10M tickets! (source: Cinema and the Second Sex). It was also nominated for a Best foreign film Academy Award. Sure, neither OSCAR nominations nor ticket sales are reliable signs of artistic quality but this is pretty good.
Le destin de Juliette (Aline Issermann)
I’m going to mention a film I’ve never seen, Aline Issermann’s first feature Le destin de Juliette. I ordered the French blu-ray a while ago hoping it would arrive in time for me to consider it for my list but it’s been delayed, so I can't/won't vote for it. But I read about it recently and think it’s worth mentioning, so here are some excerpts/quotes from a somewhat longer analysis/appreciation in Cinema and the Second Sex. The film “received an enthusiastic critical response… and was much praised by Marguerite Duras”. It is a quite depressing film, according to Cinema and the Second Sex, yet it
The story is based on the actual life of director Kurys’ mother but it’s not a biopic. At the core this is a critique of women’s position in marriages. Getting married (for a woman at the time) was often required simply to survive rather than something she would do out of love. When the mother (Huppert) has her first orgasm after 10 years of marriage it’s not with her husband. There are some subtle lesbian connotations in the film towards her friend Miou-Miou. Guy Marchand, the husband, actually says “it’s plain as a day” (the lesbianism) so maybe it’s not so subtle, I don’t know. Coup de foudre was a relatively large success: the 2nd largest box-office hit in France of the entire 1980’s directed by a female: 1.6M admissions, only bettered by Coline Serreau’s Trois hommes et un couffin selling 10M tickets! (source: Cinema and the Second Sex). It was also nominated for a Best foreign film Academy Award. Sure, neither OSCAR nominations nor ticket sales are reliable signs of artistic quality but this is pretty good.
Spoiler
It’s not really much of a spoiler but a short text before the closing credits suggests that the character Sophie, the youngest girl, is supposed to be Diane Kurys as a kid.
Le destin de Juliette (Aline Issermann)
I’m going to mention a film I’ve never seen, Aline Issermann’s first feature Le destin de Juliette. I ordered the French blu-ray a while ago hoping it would arrive in time for me to consider it for my list but it’s been delayed, so I can't/won't vote for it. But I read about it recently and think it’s worth mentioning, so here are some excerpts/quotes from a somewhat longer analysis/appreciation in Cinema and the Second Sex. The film “received an enthusiastic critical response… and was much praised by Marguerite Duras”. It is a quite depressing film, according to Cinema and the Second Sex, yet it
Le destin de Juliette was shot by cinematographer Dominique Le Rigoleur. She had shot Agatha et les lectures illimitées and L'homme atlantique for Marguerite Duras in 1981. Incidentally, Dominique Le Rigoleur was also the cinematographer on Claire Denis’ very first credited work Le 15 mai (1971).is actually an exhilarating film because of the unusual beauty of the mise-en-scène, lighting and camera work, the subtlety of the narrative development, and the quality of Laure Duthilleul’s hypnotic performace.
[...]
The camera lingers on the perfectly framed pictorial imagery, particularly the awesome open spaces of the Beauce plain which isolate the characters and efface the outside world of social reality. Instead of crude documentary realism, the film’s distancing effects produce a sort of abstract hyperrealism, closer to inner reality.
Le destin de Juliette provides a useful companion piece to Kurys’s portrayal of a woman’s revolt within a bourgeois marriage.
