Thérèse Desqueyroux (2012)
(Thérèse)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Claude Miller
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Francis Perrin
Synopsis:
The heiress to a fortune in Landes pine resin marries the son of a neighbouring family, more out of dynastic expectation than love. Underwhelmed by the experience of matrimony and maternity, she is awakened by her childhood friend's passionate affair into an awareness of her own immurement, and takes an irrational but instinctive step with which to free herself.
Review:
Mauriac's classic meditation on the tension between destructive individualism and the stultifying mechanisms of family, society and religion is also the classic unfilmable novel (cf. Franju's 1962 effort). Miller jettisons the atemporal flashback structure and interior monologue, and there is a limit to what the occasional contrived letter can do to restore the internalised viewpoint, or picturesque shots of pine trees the evocative language of imprisonment and nature personified. The result is that we have little sense of Thérèse, and therefore little sympathy, and Tautou's pudding-like performance does little to fill this void at the centre of the film. One is left with an elegant, and at times resourceful, example of French literary film-making in the Aurenche/Bost tradition.
(Thérèse)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Claude Miller
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Francis Perrin
Synopsis:
The heiress to a fortune in Landes pine resin marries the son of a neighbouring family, more out of dynastic expectation than love. Underwhelmed by the experience of matrimony and maternity, she is awakened by her childhood friend's passionate affair into an awareness of her own immurement, and takes an irrational but instinctive step with which to free herself.
Review:
Mauriac's classic meditation on the tension between destructive individualism and the stultifying mechanisms of family, society and religion is also the classic unfilmable novel (cf. Franju's 1962 effort). Miller jettisons the atemporal flashback structure and interior monologue, and there is a limit to what the occasional contrived letter can do to restore the internalised viewpoint, or picturesque shots of pine trees the evocative language of imprisonment and nature personified. The result is that we have little sense of Thérèse, and therefore little sympathy, and Tautou's pudding-like performance does little to fill this void at the centre of the film. One is left with an elegant, and at times resourceful, example of French literary film-making in the Aurenche/Bost tradition.
(Thérèse)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Claude Miller
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Francis Perrin
Synopsis:
The heiress to a fortune in Landes pine resin marries the son of a neighbouring family, more out of dynastic expectation than love. Underwhelmed by the experience of matrimony and maternity, she is awakened by her childhood friend's passionate affair into an awareness of her own immurement, and takes an irrational but instinctive step with which to free herself.
Review:
Mauriac's classic meditation on the tension between destructive individualism and the stultifying mechanisms of family, society and religion is also the classic unfilmable novel (cf. Franju's 1962 effort). Miller jettisons the atemporal flashback structure and interior monologue, and there is a limit to what the occasional contrived letter can do to restore the internalised viewpoint, or picturesque shots of pine trees the evocative language of imprisonment and nature personified. The result is that we have little sense of Thérèse, and therefore little sympathy, and Tautou's pudding-like performance does little to fill this void at the centre of the film. One is left with an elegant, and at times resourceful, example of French literary film-making in the Aurenche/Bost tradition.