Entre adultes (2007) - film review

This is the story of six men and six women, twelve unfortunates who are linked by a chain of disillusioned love.  Camille thinks she is in love with Christian, but whilst their stolen moments together enrich her life, he is unable to leave the woman he no longer loves, Caroline.  The latter suspects that her husband is cheating on her but she is more preoccupied with finding a job.  When she goes for an interview for a post in a department store, Caroline is forced to humiliate herself to gratify her prospective employer, Philippe.  Caroline’s tormenter then gets his just deserts when a prostitute he has fallen in love with abandons him...

Director Stéphane Brizé’s follow-up to his widely acclaimed drama Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé (2005) is a far more modest affair, but one that is just as incisive and meaningful in its portrayal of couples falling in and out of love.  Feeling like a shorthand version of Ingmar Bergan’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Entre adultes comprises twelve short linked tableaux and is effectively an updated version of Arthur Schnitzler’s celebrated play La Ronde, which had previously been adapted for cinema by Max Ophüls in 1950.  Stylistically, the film more closely resembles Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), employing an über-pared back approach (long static takes, minimal camera movement, lack of music, sparse naturalistic dialogue, etc.) which allows the actors to have as much artistic control over the film as its director, something which, these days, is extremely rare in cinema.  At a time when filmmakers are increasingly preoccupied with style for its own sake or crass commercialisation, it is refreshing to come across a film that has absolutely no pretensions and seeks merely to throw back the shutters and present life as it is - bittersweet and sometimes cruel, but never malignant.

Brizé was commissioned to make the film by a publicly funded outfit in the Val de Loire region, partly to provide experience for a dozen actors who had yet to appear in front of the camera.  Entre adultes was made in just ten days (only four of which were devoted to filming) on an extremely modest budget.  The limited resources available to Brizé allowed him and his enthusiastic team of actors to come up with something fresh and original, a film that dispenses with artifice and focuses on the essentials of human relationships, employing only the rudiments of filmmaking technique to get its message across.   Having completed the film in 2004, its director had no illusions that it would ever enjoy a theatrical release.  The film would doubtless have languished in obscurity had it not been seen by Claude Lelouch, the internationally renowned film director and producer.  Lelouch was so taken with the film that he immediately committed himself to financing its distribution, to give it the audience he felt it deserved.

This film is testament to what can be achieved with minimal resources and a concentration of pure talent on both sides of the camera.  Although it was made in a ludicrously short time and on a budget that wouldn’t even cover the catering costs on a commercial film nowadays, Entre adultes is arguably Brizé’s most perfect film to date, an exquisitely truthful depiction of the fragility and perversity of human relationships.   With economy and subtlety, each of the twelve sketches says just as much as needs to be said, and not a jot more, and there is not a performance in the film that does not resound with conviction.  Entre adultes is unlikely to have mass appeal (more’s the pity) but for the connoisseur of the rigorously unfussy film d’auteur it is a rare delight - an authentic little film that dissects life (real life, not its shallow soap opera alternative) with a scalpel of blistering acuity to expose the throbbing veins of truth that we can all recognise.

© James Travers 2011

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