7 ans (2007)

7 ans is a French romantic film drama first released in 2007, directed by Jean-Pascal Hattu.  The film stars Valérie Donzelli, Cyril Troley, Bruno Todeschini, Pablo de la Torre and Nadia Kaci.  It has also been released under the title: 7 Years.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


When her husband Vincent is sent to prison for seven years, Maïté visits him twice weekly to speak with him and collect his laundry, which she washes and irons assiduously.  On one of these visits, Maïté encounters a stranger, Jean, who offers her a lift in his car.  Maïté accepts and before she knows what is happening she has embarked on a passionate love affair with a man about whom she knows nothing.  Then she learns that Jean is a warder at the prison where Vincent in being detained...

In 7 ans, his first full-length film, director Jean-Pascal Hattu broaches a subject that is hardly ever talked about, let alone given a dramatic treatment, but is one which nonetheless deserves our attention.  There have been many films which show the effect of incarceration from the point of view of the prisoner, but  surprisingly few that have tackled the same situation from the perspective of a spouse of a detainee.  Hattu’s remarkable debut feature explores, with brutal lucidity and searing humanity, the effect that an enforced separation has on a young woman who finds herself torn between her loyalty to her husband and her natural sexual needs.  It is a stark and provocative piece of cinema in which its three central protagonists are driven into a perverse ménage a trois situation as a result of their frustrated desires and mutual love.

The focus of the drama is Maïté, who is devoted to her husband Vincent, a man serving a seven-year prison sentence.  The intensely physical relationship of these two characters is revealed to us through the fetishistic way in which Maïté washes and irons her husband’s soiled laundry and the wave of suppressed desire that surfaces whenever she meets him in the prison visiting room.  Yet Maïté’s needs are far greater than can be satisfied by sniffing dirty underwear and a quick grope when the warder’s back is turned.   Vincent is not the only one who is imprisoned.  Maïté too is condemned, forced to live a semi-existence inhabited by empty rituals and miserable solitude.  When the stranger Jean enters her life and offers her no-strings sex in his car she appears to have regained her zest for living.  It is never Jean that she makes love to, but her husband - this self-deceit is how she assuages her guilt so that she can remain the faithful wife whilst regaining her status as a complete woman.  But things are not what they seem.  Jean is not only gratifying Maïté’s needs; he is also servicing the perverted desires of Vincent, who has lured him into a Faustian pact so that he may reach Maïté in the only way he can, via a proxy lover. The one thing that Vincent has overlooked is the possibility that Jean and Maïté might fall in love...

7 ans is one of the most thought-provoking and original French dramas of the past decade, an arresting excursion into new territory with its courageous portrayal of the limits that individuals will go to to satisfy their desires.  Assisted by talented screenwriter Gilles Taurand, Jean-Pascal Hattu conjures up a world of quiet despair and intense emotional longing, where the unintended consequences of an imperfect judicial system are exposed with blistering compassion and acuity.  Assistant to André Téchiné on Les Roseaux sauvages (1994) and Les Voleurs (1996), Hattu had previously made a number of documentaries including one for the Franco-Belgian television programme Strip-Tease about the life of prison warders.  It was whilst making this latter short film that Hattu developed an interest in the effect that incarceration has on inmates and their spouses.  His original intention was to make a documentary, but this proved to be a non-starter when the prison authorities refused to give their support. 

Hattu’s film may be fictional but there is an almost visceral documentary feel to its rendering of the bleakest of existential landscapes, trenchant realism tinged with a crisp but twisted poetry and a darkly sinister eroticism.  Not only does it convincingly depict the harsh regime of life in prison (which is not nearly as cosy as the tabloids will have us believe), but it also propels us into the tormented inner worlds of the three protagonists who, in different ways, are all victims of an inhumane prison system.  Thanks to Hattu’s mature direction and the arresting performances of the three leads (Valérie Donzelli, Cyril Troley and Bruno Todeschini - all excellent beyond words), 7 ans is a haunting piece of cinema that makes an extremely powerful artistic and social statement.

© James Travers 2010

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