Michael's Movie Grade: A
A wonderful romance movie from France.
Though this is a romance film, the movie is also an excellent character study and a deep examination of infidelity. This is a dialogue heavy film, but yet this dialogue is never expository. Instead, the dialogue adds to this film's great character study. Much of the dialogue is manipulation or lies. Even though these characters never tell the truth, their lies tell more about who they are then they could ever say telling the truth. While the characters are lying to each other, one gets the feeling that they are lying just as much to themselves. They so deeply want to believe these lies they say that one gets the feeling that they actually believe them to an extent. Nearly every scene between the trio in the love triangle shows each character trying to have the moral high ground. They spend of much time not only accusing each other but asserting their own moral superiority over the other. This comes off as not only a way to get back at the other person, but also to make themselves believe that they are the better person as well as the victim in each situation. Each conversation ends with each character feeling only surer of their guiltlessness and the other's guilt. Yet the self-deception is not just in the dialogue. For instance one of the characters drives far out of his way to simply go grocery shopping and it just so happens that his mom and son live around that grocery store. There is no way this could be just a coincidence, but when he gets home he tells his wife, he didn't visit them because he just went out to grocery shop. Yet he seemingly never questions this hypocrisy himself and the few times he sees his mother or son, he once again takes the moral high ground and nothing either of them can say will have any effect on how he perceives each decision. This true regardless of how much he tells his son that these decisions are "his choice."
Most romantic movies will either view infidelity as an obstacle to overcome or the last straw in a relationship and little else. Yet this is no average movie and director and co-writer Claire Denis is no average filmmaker. This film truly examines why such a thing could happen in a seemingly happy relationship. Our main female character is married but has been in love with another man before. After running into this man again she begins to fall back in love with him. She doesn't just immediately sleep with this man though, but just meets him as a way of spending time with an old friend. When that relationship though grows physical she does not view herself as wrong in any way for participating. The affair just feels so right, but doesn't make her stop loving her husband, so she figures what could be wrong with this double life. All the while this movie never praises nor condemns her actions, it just simply shows them and lets us make out the complexities of these implications. This film never takes a moralizing tone with any of the characters, but instead we just see them flaws, virtues and all. Because of this it truly challenges us to examine the moral implications of what each character does in ways that can make us feel uncomfortable at times. Because of this it may not always be a pleasant movie but it is always an engaging one.
This is a one of a kind movie and one in which your appreciation will grow for after you leave the theater and really think about what you just saw. Clarie Denis is a brilliant filmmaker and her first film since 2018, will not disappoint her fans one bit.
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