Clair de femme (1979) - film review

With his wife dying a slow and undignified natural death, Michel prepares to leave France and catch a plane to Caracas.  At the airport, he has second thoughts.  Whilst walking the streets of Paris, he runs into Lydia, a middle-aged woman whose husband is brain damaged after a car accident in which her daughter died.  Michel and Lydia find mutual support in each other’s company, but are they destined for one another…?

Clair de femme is not the kind of film you would associate with director Costa-Gavras.  Best known for his high profile political thrillers, such as Z (1969) and État de siege (1973), Costa-Gavras also directed this low-key romantic drama, which brings together two icons of French cinema, Yves Montand and Romy Schneider (both in the twilight of their film careers).  Although it is far from being the director’s best film, it was a significant commercial success in France.

This is the kind of film which the French tend to do very well – a slow-paced, character-driven drama in which a middle aged man and woman fall in love in the midst of the worst kind of mid-life crisis.  If Claude Sautet had directed this film, it would probably have been a masterpiece.  Lacking experience with this genre of film, Costa-Gavras gives us a significantly lesser work, but one which is nonetheless poignant – and occasionally insightful.  Romy Schneider’s performance is particularly memorable, with the actress exposing a far darker and more tortured soul than ever before  – a reflection of her troubled personal life at the time or a presentiment of the the greater tragedy that was to come?

© James Travers 2005

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