Cryptic Gazes
‘A Heart in Winter’. Directed by Claude
Sautet, this is a story of repressed feelings and repressed individuals. The
story itself may be a ‘love triangle’ if you will, or is it a ‘love
quadrangle’? Or is it about love at all? This is a story essentially, of the
characters of Maxime, Stephane and Camille – all 3 are connected with creating music.
Maxime and Stephane are in the business of crafting violins and Camille herself
is an up-and-rising violinist. Maxime is a polished social sort cultivating a
dedicated clientele. Stephane is the master craftsman; he works away quietly eschewing
unnecessary interactions - cutting, measuring, burnishing and beveling the sonorous
wood. The violinist Camille stepping onto a cusp of musical greatness is
involved in a romantic relationship with Maxime. All these details atleast the film
is very much clear on.
The film also shows the extent to
which Stephane is introverted; he shares a normal working relationship with
only 3 people – his business partner Maxime, a book-seller Helene and a past
mentor who is the closest to a father figure that Stephane can call upon. Stephane
seems to understand himself but does not like what he reads in himself; that is
his major orientation towards the external too – he understands but does not
know what he ought to do. Stephane’s life gets shaken however when Maxime gets
involved with Camille, and both move in together in a bid to cement their
blossoming relationship. For a careful, precise person for whom his craft is
his only life, this development creates the first uncharacteristic stirrings in
Stephane’s bonded heart. Further developments follow when the normally unobtrusive
Stephane steps into Camille’s life in small ways – attending Camille’s
rehearsals and recordings, shooting long deep gazes – and Camille too finds herself
getting attracted towards the quietness and seeming completeness of the violin-maker. Camille admits her new-found
admiration in front of Maxime, and comes over to Stephane. All that has
happened till now is conventional romance; what transpires after this point is
a bit complicated.
Stephane rejects Camille’s love,
explains that he does not love her and only wanted to get back at Maxime for some
reason he does not fathom, leaving Camille devastated. In a canvas which seems
to abjure passion and vivid displays of emotions, there is a cathartic outburst
when Camille barges into one of Stephane and Helene’s usual coffee-table
conversations in a café, and confronts Stephane for leading her on when he
really had nothing to offer. A sad cycle of remonstrance, bitterness and
ultimately, forgiveness involving all the 3 characters flows from all this
mess. All these details the film lets us on gradually and sometimes, with stark
clarity in tiny delicate moments.
This brings us to the parts where the movie apparently has nothing to communicate to the viewer. Camille who studied
for a time under the same mentor as Stephane’s is described by the mentor as
the “cold, polished girl who keeps others
at a distance” and yet, she inexplicably falls for nothing more than the
brooding, intense gazes of Stephane who is to remember, too closed to even
venture an opinion in a conversation not involving violins. Somehow this
strange attraction may be accepted for love is, if anything, quite inscrutable.
However, the bafflement runs still deeper – there is a hint (and nothing else) of a past failed
romance to partly explain Stephane’s regressive demeanour; the movie is curiously
silent on why Stephane should harbor a resentment towards the suave, worldly
Maxime (one can only laboriously infer
that Stephane might be nursing a deep jealousy for the easy social grace with
which the latter manages his business and his romance), and there is
eventually, the added matter of the veneer of sterility in the relationships
formed by the principal characters. Maxime (who
is to a degree, self-seeking) is willing to leave his wife to live with
Camille but is oddly undemonstrative of anything except an altruistic understanding
of why Camille should opt for (again the
not-obvious charms of) Stephane. The book-seller Helene who is obviously close
to Stephane and confides about her love-life in him (in the hope of eliciting a romantic interest??), shares a platonic
interest in Stephane’s ‘thing’ with
Camille. So, there is Maxime who is obviously in love with Camille who in turn falls
in love with Stephane who unfortunately, has no love for her. There is also
Helene who may or may not be in love with Stephane. There is also a dense
side-story involving the mentor and his lover, a merry but sometimes
high-strung duo who may or may not be important in the scheme of things.
The high points of this movie
notwithstanding the manner in which the characters sometimes interact, are the
masterful performances of both Daniel Auteuil (as Stephane) and Emmanuelle
Béart (as Camille). As the intensely private Stephane, Daniel lends great
credulity to the hesitant, sometimes deep gazes with which his character views
others and the world. One can always sense in any scene involving Stephane that
the character is holding a part of himself back so that no one is able to completely
perceive him or what he thinks. He is troubled yes, in an unseen way but he is
also strangely assured in the way he goes about his trade or garnering the
interest of Camille.
The character of Camille attracts
a ready lampoon on the guileless but love-lorn woman who is taken for a ride
and then unceremoniously discarded. This is where Emmanuelle as Camille,
exhibits a singular portrayal of a woman who is scorned but save for that one
moment in the café scene, never lacks in grace. Emmanuelle Béart is one of
those true Pre-Raphaelite beauties with her long, slender swan-like neck, raven hair,
expressive eyes that make one swim with headiness and perfect lips. She lends
beauty to everything that she enacts in the movie; of particular mention is the
absolutely rapturous manner in which she plays the violin. As she holds up the
violin and screws her head slightly upwards, eyes half-closed in deep passion,
she embodies the true fiery ornament of transcendental music. She embodies the
emotion of love too, in that bridled but lush manner which is the hallmark of a
true romance; there is a scene where Emmanuelle wonderfully masks the first flushes
of emotion in a violin recital where Stephane directs steady, unflinching looks
at her. She starts playing the violin, then becomes conscious of Stephane;
there is a tiny imperceptible change in her posture, her music stutters, and
she asks for a glass of water.
The perfectly assured manner in
which Daniel and Emmanuelle act out their characters, obviously stems from the
complete way in which they understood what their characters are and how they
should behave. This makes me believe that there is a scope of re-interpretation
into the story and the story’s characters, and a more complete understanding.
For the moment though, this is a movie which sees some bits, misses a lot and
explains little.
CineM’s Verdict:
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