Après l’amour (1992)

Après l’amour is a French romantic film drama first released in 1992, directed by Diane Kurys.  The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Bernard Giraudeau, Hippolyte Girardot, Lio and Yvan Attal.  It has also been released under the title: After Love.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


For Lola, a 35-year-old writer of romantic fiction, the first pangs of mid-life trauma are beginning to bite.  She currently lives with architect David but has started to have an affair with another man, a musician named Tom.  Both David and Tom are married, and each has two young children.  Whereas David feels comfortable about leaving his wife for Lola, Tom is hesitant, even though it is Tom that Lola really loves...

In one of her better films, Diane Kurys paints a vivid and rather moving portrait of mid-life crisis – as experienced by the generation that, in their bra-burning youth, participated in the 1968 riots and thereby caused a cultural revolution in France.  Kurys’s films are noted for their honest depiction of brittle human relationships and complex portrayals of femininity in a world where women find it increasingly challenging to balance the requirements of family and work with their own emotional needs. Après l’amour is particularly memorable for its subtle blend of realism, irony and pathos – a familiar love triangle as seen through the eyes of a woman of great perception and sensitivity.  Kurys’s intelligent and incisive screenplay is well served by a superlative cast, with strong performances from Isabelle Huppert (the star of Kurys’s earlier film Coup de foudre), Bernard Giraudeau and Hippolyte Girardot.

© James Travers 2008

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