CineM Review: The Secret Garden (1993)

"How does your garden grow?"

Watching ‘The Secret Garden’ made me realise a few things about children. Firstly, that their world though appearing carefree, is just as serious as ours, inhabited as it is also by the more‘adult-like’ emotions of rejection, coercion, belief and finally redemption. Secondly, we as children make the best friendships and though they may not necessarily last a lifetime, that innocence and feeling of something special may last a whole lifetime. And these childhood friendships are not as hard to establish either – sometimes even a shared secret or joy in playing a mutual game suffices to create that wonderful bond. Lastly, children possess a single-minded ability to make up their own ideas and stick to them with a great finality. ‘The Secret Garden’ explores this complex world of children with an understanding and a delicacy which is startling.

This film directed by Agnieszka Holland who has earlier made the children-themed ‘Europa Europa’ and ‘Olivier Olivier’, has adapted the screenplay from Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel of the same title. The author who had herself led a chequered life, had written a host of romantic and children books. Though the ‘The Secret Garden’ was relatively unheralded during the author’s lifetime, it has subsequently emerged as one the classic English books ever written for children, and the film by staying true to the book, does ample justice to the ideals prescribed therein.

As stories meant for children go, ‘The Secret Garden’ too throws its characters onto a path of vicissitudes, discovery and triumph. Orphaned in India, young Mary Lennox (played to perfection by Kate Maberly) comes to live with her uncle in his rambling estate, Misselthwaite Manor. This estate is also home to a vague sense of disquiet and a human entourage comprising of a cherub of a housemaid, Martha (acted endearingly by Laura Crossley), her Huckleberry-esque brother named Dickon (Andrew Knott), and a strict and forbidding housekeeper Mrs. Medlock (Maggie Smith). Set in the moors of Yorkshire, the estate also houses a secret garden which belonged to Mary’s aunt (her mother’s twin sister), whose death has plunged her uncle and everything in Misselthwaite Manor into a pall of relentless gloom. Mary’s grey and massive room in the grey and massive manor is swathed with intricate and heavy-looking tapestries – the whole look seemingly consistent with a house that can only be home to dour-looking adults, and no children.

Mary manages to splash her own burst of individual energy when she makes a series of strange discoveries, starting with a secret passageway in the manor leading to her dead aunt’s secluded room, a tentative friendship with a trilling robin who leads her into her aunt’s garden, now locked away and running wild and finally, her cousin Colin (Heydon Prowse) who is proclaimed too frail and lives like a condemned person, secreted in some gloomy room with barricaded windows inside that massive house. With these discoveries in that seemingly distant house, Mary proceeds to blaze a child-like path of joyful effort, honest intentions, clear-speak and simple love which goes around in a circle, enveloping the entire household in a new bond of life.

Kate Maberly who had earlier acted in a series of BBC productions brings in a petulant but lovable streak into the character; observe her diminutive jaw stuck out in moments of impetuous anger, the bitterness in her words when she spits them in the face of un-understanding adult supervision, and the smile in her eyes when she gets her way. Mary when she starts out is not very dissimilar to the cantankerous, almost infuriatingly stubborn Colin who is wedded to the belief that he is facing imminent death. As the smart and articulate Mary first aided by the simple country boy skills of Dickon sets out to bring the long-neglected garden alive, and then accompanied by the till-now reclusive cousin continues her incursions into the joyousness and freshness of a new spring now shining upon Misselthwaithe, we witness a transformation. And this transformation is all around – from the bare, weed-overgrown garden now bristling with a colourful bloom of flowers, to the new-found health and vigour in Colin, and the blossoming of the goodness that lies inside Mary’s heart.

This film succeeds at numerous levels; the first obvious mark for me was the superlative acting by all the characters, in particular the young ensemble of Mary, Martha, Dickon and Colin, and finally Mrs. Medlock. Exchanges between children are always fascinating, underlined as they are by their simple joys, tantrums and fears. There is in particular one exchange between the determined Mary and clamorous Colin, when she confronts her cousin with her unfailing belief in his good health borne out of the simple common sense which children do possess. Colin protests and creates a scene, twitching his lips at Mary’s stern rebukes and at last, capitulates. There is another moment in the film when the 3 children gather around a bonfire and circle it in a sort of trance-like surrender, mumbling inanities but calling out for a miracle with a simple but deep fervor which compels even an attending adult to participate in the unlikely voodoo dance. There is also another delightful moment on a swing when Mary and Dickon exchange a glance (is it the first awakening of something greater than just friendship??) of something significant but as yet, indecipherable.

The film also succeeds in capturing other moments of beauty (great cinematography by Roger Deakins). Since I love flowers and gardens, the time-lapse photography of blooming flowers rising up from the ground under the love and care of Mary & Co. was particularly mesmerising. In a film with so many deft touches, the allegory of the secret garden barred and neglected and then, brought back to life by the tender hands of the young children stands tall and unshakeable. In a sense, our lives are also disconcerting similar.

This is a film about the magic which is nothing but irresolute belief in positiveness, and about children. Just like a dear friend of mine who recently got a wonderful opportunity to interact with kids and bring together a great skit by harnessing the resourcefulness and the innate grace of young children, I too have immense belief in the powers that lie hidden inside their immense throbbing hearts.

CineM’s Verdict:

RIP The Man Who Loved Movies

What Roger Ebert (June 18, 1942 - April 4, 2013) has to say goes a long way beyond films and the people who make them. His thoughts possess a much greater reverberance when applied to the larger theatre of the comic-drama that is Life. One unwavering yardstick for me (for the last 3 years atleast) when I set out to see a film is to check what Roger Ebert has to say about it. This does not mean that my own thoughts have been in exact consonance with whatever he said. It is safe for me to say however without the least reserve, that he is able to delve deeper and unearth greater meaning from films that I had thought possible, accustomed as I was, to look at the medium of movies as basically a carrier of entertainment.

Beyond the loud (and silent) tears, the raucousness of strident laughter, the silky manipulations of work and society, the remonstrance of failed romances, and the tentative and ill-at-ease expressions (and triumphantly evocative demonstrations) of all the colours of moviedom, what films essentially seek to draw forth are the myriad hues of life itself. And with some effort, a little study and nudged by the knowing words of a great critic such as Ebert, films acquire a more realistic dimension – like a parable, they enable us to draw our own conclusions of what happened. In inexplicable ways, I have also found occasions where I have been able to apply some of these learnings to my own existence.

Ebert’s critiques of films as published in his website and in his books are wonderful pieces to read. They are peppered with unique observations, bits of humour and embellished at times with the rarest of rare truths, which are more likely to find their way into great spiritual books and discourses. Thank you, Ebert.

“For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions.”

- what Ebert says in his review of Wender’s ‘Wings of Desire'

Winter Garden @ 2013

Winter is a good time for flowers. For those homes with a garden, winter is a colourful season – yellows, reds, purples, whites – it is nice to see all those hues splashing and cascading in merry confusion. As I have discovered, it takes very little to get all these colours into your garden and then, into your life. Nature takes care of most of the stuff anyway; the sun happily shines its warmth and light down on the sprouting shoots, the soil nourishes the roots and as the gardener, you have to water and every now and then, do a nip and tuck on the spreading plants.

I had gone along with chrysanthemums and petunias last year for winter. The results I was able to see encouraged me to take on a more ambitious winter project this time. So, I went around consulting garden aficionados, collected young plants, took care with the potting mix and watered and prayed. Nearly 2 months after I had planted the first tiny plant, colours slowly started appearing in my garden. First it was the chrysanthemums who shyly opened their radiant faces to the sunlight; the gay petunias imperiously followed and pretty soon, there were blooms of all colours and shapes. The hesitant pansies started blooming and it is a real joy when the pansy petals with the loved face-like dark prints appear. The zagged-edged dianthuses were not to be left behind and they too joined in the general bedlam of colours. The verbenas too opened their little bell-shaped petals with great willingness. Finally, it was the turn of the big boys – the dahlias with their impressive girth and humongous multi-layer petals.

When I see all the richness around me, I look up at the big gardener above and give him a hearty 'thank you'. I forgot to mention the most important tool that the gardener has in his paraphernalia, and that is…love!

(All images shown here are from my own garden; so nothing borrowed J. )

An Art of Many Forms

I am terrible at drawing; have always been since school days when my Vinci-esque repertoire was limited to battle-scenes of unaerodynamic-looking planes above dropping egg-shaped bombs on proportionally-challenged hapless infantry below, grotesquely-smiling plaid-shirted ‘kou-boys’ with shoulders too broad and legs too small and finally, my pièce de résistance – scenery sketches of hills, valleys and plains. My sceneries were dominated by triangular hills which I am sure, would have made Pythagoras proud and a serpentine river flowing down from the hills in distinctly Z-like courses, and of course, the ubiquitous proportionally-challenged people frolicking in the foreground. Evidently I suck at drawing, which is why I have forever looked upon people gifted with the artist’s eye for detail, colour and imagination (not to forget proportion!!) with awe and a teeny bit of jealousy.

While some artistically-gifted people are content to express themselves on drawing paper and painter’s canvases, still others explore several additional avenues of expression, like the sand painters who work such wonderous images using just sand or the artists who use superlative imaginative skills to fashion beautiful objects of art using the most nondescript of artistic medium – sticks!! Yes, it is true that over the ages, man has sought and found unique and mesmerizing artistic voices where stones, egg shells, glass panes, even pieces of discarded junk have done service as sometimes the brush, at other times as the blank canvas upon which man carves out his impossible, wonderful dreams.

To conclude, for those with the creative bent, everything is grist to the mill. So there is this friend of mine; she is unmistakably a member of this singular clan of individuals who splash the world around with colours and new forms. She carries a notebook around – a constant companion of many years – where she records the passing wisps of still half-forming images which sometimes float by. Her living room is adorned with wall murals, picture portraits, a framed Ganesha made up of perfectly-cut and wielded silver foil pieces and wonderful knick-knacks of decorative items painstakingly crafted with everyday items.

I have reproduced one of her most recent murals; I find the colours, the smooth curves and yes, the imaginativeness in juxtaposing the gently-swaying flower stalks with that of the left silhouette of a girl’s face quite striking. Now more than ever, I am convinced that Art is a gift – a gift which brings joy to the self and to others, and creates new spaces for reflection and comprehension. Yes, Art is a gift.

CineM Review: The Big Heat (1953)

PROLOGUE

Too many Bollywood films in the 80s and 90s bolstered by the phenomenon of the angry young man featured the protagonist as a cop hell-bent on busting crime with a passion which can only be termed ‘manic’ and a personal confrontational style which is centered around violence – acting out fatuous impulses with the inevitable result that his loved ones would be promptly bumped off, which would again only, understandably whet his appetite for further mindless destruction. This celebrated ‘knight’ always simmered with seething rage which would ultimately boil over, but at the same time was also capable of performing good deeds like rescuing a hapless orphan from the streets. Bollywood brought out (and still does) a slew of anti-establishment films characterised by a compulsive desire to dispose off every piece of criminal scum in the country, featuring heroes whose destructive behaviour ensures that every member of the supporting cast either got killed or tortured. What these films essentially manifest is a war and the troubled hero as the soldier for whom this war becomes his only life.

A Different Bane

Before attempting to write a critique of ‘The Big Heat’, it is perhaps important to understand 2 things – firstly, the notion of the dark anti-hero as developed in art and secondly, the origins of the film’s director, Fritz Lang. Art forms like cinema and comics have developed and fine-tuned the ‘anti-hero’ concept for the last 4 decades, evolving the lone crusader from a do-gooder with an individualistic sense of meting out justice at all costs into the morally-flawed paranoid reactionary who is only too willing to kill and maim in his quest; a possessed individual with twisted, dark moods and overt violence in his thoughts and actions. However, it was a far more conventional form of evil which had shaped and defined Fritz Lang’s life and work. Partly-Jewish Lang was one of the foremost German directors (he had already made ‘M’ and ‘Metropolis’) and personally mandated by Hitler and Goebbles to make Nazi propaganda films before he escaped and became a Hollywood legend making films out of the eternal motifs of the dubious circumstances surrounding man and the evil that perennially lurks inside him. Lang’s films are streaked by the presence of individuals insidiously primed to wreak violence and the accompanying emotional ravages. Lang’s career spanned geography, language and culture; bridging as it did both the silent and sound eras. Lang’s earlier films effectively laid the ground stone for establishment of that intense brooding genre in Hollywood’s Golden Age - film-noir.

On the face of it, this is a plain cop-versus-mob crime thriller but it has considerable dark undertones of moral ambiguity and psychological conflict. Like many other film-noir classics, this is a canvas defined not by the traditionally uplifting qualities of heroism, idealism or duty but by knotty hues of self-preservation, vengeance and utter oblivion in its pursuit. This is a remarkably violent film – in which other film else have you seen all the female characters killed off?

The film starts with a lingering shot of a pistol lying on a table in a study. A man picks it up and blows his brains out. Glenn Ford as Detective Sgt. Dave Bannion is assigned to the case and he starts the investigation with the dead man’s widow. It turns out that the dead man’s an ex-cop and from there, Bannion picks up the threads leading to a brief meeting with the man’s girlfriend who comes up with a possible story which Bannion finds unbelievable and the widow upon questioning, dismisses as baseless. Subsequent events seems to point at the prevailing mob boss in the city and his henchman Vince Stone (a very young but very very talented Lee Marvin). The introduction of Vince Stone’s character is accompanied by the first appearance of his girl, Gloria Grahame as Debby Marsh. Juxtaposed against the coldness of the criminal world are interesting short and warm vignettes of Bannion’s blissful life with his wife (Jocelyn Brando) and kid.

This film which is at one level, that of a heroic and dedicated police officer is at another wholly disparate level, really about something else. The tipping point in the film occurs when the murder investigation casts its own dark spell of mayhem on Bannion’s little family. The big heat inside Bannion’s character find a volcanic way out…and how!!

Besides the dead man in the opening sequence, the story chillingly kills off all the 4 main female leads and what is morally damning for Bannion is that in one way or another, his reckless actions have been culpable in all the 4 killings. Bannion for all his sincerity and dedication in the early part of the murder investigation is prone to foolhardy and impulsive decisions. Like when he promptly discloses the information provided by the dead man’s girlfriend which leads to her torture and ultimate murder, and he does not think twice before bouncing off to the mob boss’ house to confront him for threatening calls being made to his house, and to add insult to further injury, slams his fist into an underling’s face at the slightest provocation.

The tragedy which befalls his family shortly afterwards lays bare the sinister mask underneath Bannion’s character. A brilliantly played-out scene of intimidation, brazen challenge and momentary capitulation in a city bar involving Vince, Debby, another mob hand and Bannion, brings to the fore Bannion’s barely-suppressed rage. “Thief!” Bannion splutters  with venom at the face of Vince.

This scene at the bar prefaces the third act of the film which was for me personally, the most enigmatic. This portion of the story showcases the immense talents of Gloria (Debby) and Lee (Vince). Debby is the typical moll with a flippant attitude, a light speech and coquettish mannerisms (eyes which twinkle with allure, lips which curl up invitingly, and a languorous body language) and the gangster Vince possesses that coldness evident in the thin lips, lean face and not-unattractive scowl. Lee successfully portrays the wired-up violent streak in Vince’s character which the film brings out with sharp intensity in a couple of marvelous bits. The most vicious bit of violence in the film is where Vince with great intent and a chilling callousness, upturns a pot of boiling coffee on Debby’s beautiful face. This coffee-throwing incident sparks a transformation in Debby from a vacuous and self-loving pretty girl whose favourite pastime it seems, is checking herself in a mirror. Gloria excels in the character of Debby; her bounce, lithe figure, a child-like enunciation and suggestive expressions are on the surface, all that is to the character. As with most such characters however, there is a hard steel in the spirit and an obscure sense of righteousness which when provoked, manifests itself in the most resolute of actions. The new Debby proceeds ahead on that new trail of retribution along with Bannion.

This is a remarkable film; remarkable for its performances, remarkable for the terrific lines (Debby with her irreparably disfigured face bravely tries to keep up her act: "I guess the scar isn't so bad -- not if it's only on one side. I can always go through life sideways.”), remarkable because it does not shy away from uncovering the terrible face of human lusts even when the mission seems righteous. The main writer of the screenplay is screenwriter Sydney Boehm, a former crime reporter who alongwith Lang lends that strange, unquiet air of apprehension and impending danger.

p.s. Though largely unheralded in his lifetime, Fritz Lang’s oeuvre is the stuff of master filmmaking and the sceptre of the dangerous world of layered human evil is relevant in modern cinema too. No wonder then, that as a heads-up to the great director in Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering replete with cinematic references - ‘Django Unchained’, the beguiling, menacing character of Dr. King Schultz played by Christoph Waltz rides on a horse whose name is you guessed it, ‘Fritz’!!

CineM’s Verdict:

Of Memories Lush

An uncle passed away on 2^nd Jan this year. Death of a loved one invites reminiscence. One attempts to piece together an image of the departed person through a collective prism of memories; if the life lived is fulfilling, fruitful and love-filled, that prism throws up a joyous and generous mental image. So is the case when I try to recall past memories, buried incidents with my uncle, Dulal jetha (jetha being the Assamese colloquial for the husband of one’s paternal aunt).  Jetha was a doctor who served with the Assam state government’s medical department; during his service stretched over 4 decades, he had served in various remote areas throughout the state. After his retirement from active government medical duty, he used to look back on his past days when he used to go out on medical calls in all odd hours, sometimes trudging through dense forests, clambering over hills, or crossing rivers in spate on nothing more than a flimsy rowboat. And he had many interesting storied to relate from the various experiences he had while on duty.

Jetha had a wondrous and enthralling story-telling technique as he would relate his past experiences and the little impressionable kid that I was, I would sit captivated listening to all those stories filled with wild animals, ghouls, hunters and all other quirky, mysterious things which a young boy’s mind is occupied with. Years later, Jetha would compile all these stories and author a book in Assamese about his experiences. Not having gone through the book because I tend to labour while reading the Assamese vernacular, I would ask Jetha to recount those stories whenever I would visit him. I was grown-up by then but Jetha s stories about feebly-lit stormy nights, colourful rural folk and yes, those ghostly apparitions would still captivate me.

One very incredible story told by Jetha come to my mind now. It pays to bear in mind that the Assam of bygone days was an almost-alive mass of steaming jungles and wild and exotic animals who were far more in number than people, little-known tribes who had their own quaint customs, and villages scattered very sparsely with runners being the only means of communication. Anyway there was a malaria epidemic around the 60s in a particular area, and Jetha was dispatched on emergency duty to stem the outbreak. The area was covered with jungles and every morning, Jetha would set out with an orderly and carrying his precious little box of medicines. As protection against the mosquitoes swarming all over and the myriad wild animals on the ground, Jetha had taken up temporary quarters in a tree-house. One evening as Jetha returned back from his daily rounds, what he saw resting peacefully on the ground just below the tree-house stopped him in his tracks. It was a full-grown Bengal tiger reclining in that particular insouciant way that all big cats have perfected; idly swatting away the flies and flicking his tail contentedly. Jetha and his orderly slunk back into some bushes, staying still and observing the tiger from not more than 20 feet away. They sat there for close to an hour, darkness had almost set in and the emerging mosquitoes made sitting still an almost impossible task. Squirming and praying all the time, my Jetha told me that he almost felt the hot breath of the tiger as it lay panting. Finally, the tiger stood up, examined the bushes where jetha and the orderly lay hiding with an indifferent stare and suddenly, bounded off into the dark green.

Back in the time when I heard this story for the first time, I had read and re-read Jim Corbett’s ‘Man-Eaters of Kumaon’, ‘The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag’ and ‘Tree-tops’ too. He was my hero and it seemed to my hungry imaginative mind that jetha too was no less than Corbett. He had his own tree-top residence and lived to tell the tale of how a tiger rested no more than half a cricket pitch’s length away from him.

Jetha was born in a small nondescript village in Assam but I am certain that a small part of his ancestry must have been undoubtedly Swiss; you see, he was very precise and he always, always made good time!! When Jetha walked, he would fairly trot; when he was at the dinner-table, he would invariably be the first to finish and when he would be driving, everyone else would be left far behind. There was also a certain economy and efficiency of manner around his behaviour which suggested a great deal of attention to what he was doing or saying.

As a son, father, husband and brother, Jetha led the kind of life which many us desire but seldom lead. Nothing in Jetha’s stories was make-believe; his chequered, dutiful and joy-filled life was the same way too.

CineM Review: Un Coeur en Hiver (1992)

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: