Je l’aimais (2009) - film review

One evening, Pierre decides to share with his daughter-in-law Chloé a secret that has haunted him for twenty years.  It is the secret of his love for Mathilde, a woman who meant more to him than almost anything.  But it was not a love that Pierre could hold onto.  There were too many risks, too much uncertainty, too much at stake.  Instead, Pierre chose the safer road.  But it is now the other road, the one not travelled, that he contemplates with regret...

With just three films under her belt, actress-turned director Zabou Breitman has already established herself as one of France’s most capable filmmakers, renowned for her explorations of the rich complexities of human relationships in her exquisitely crafted dramas.   After the superlative Se souvenir des belles choses (2001) and L’Homme de sa vie (2006), Breitman surpasses herself with her latest sensitive survey of the human soul, a compassionate account of an adulterous love story that is doomed to end in tears. Je l’aimais is a truly heart-wrenching film, intelligently scripted, skilfully directed by a mature and confident filmmaker, and performed with exceptional finesse by some supremely talented actors.

Adapted from Anna Gavalda’s best selling novel, the story is simple to the point of banality.  A married middle-aged man falls in love and pursues a passionate extra-marital affair with a young career woman.  The affair ultimately goes nowhere and the male protagonist is left with a lifetime’s worth of regrets, which he later unburdens on his daughter-in-law when her own marriage hits the rocks.  There is no more to the story than this, and yet Breitman and her cast make it an epic tale of tragic love that is so intense, so realistically played, that it genuinely does stir the emotions and make you want to rip off Eros’s wings and dissolve them in acid.

As in all her films to date, Breitman is fortunate in her choice of actors.  Daniel Auteuil gives a devastatingly truthful performance as the man who, almost by accident, falls headfirst into a passionate love affair only to find that he hasn’t the guts to sustain the relationship.  Auteuil is a past-master when it comes to playing reluctant lovers and his tortured portrayal here is on a par with the one he gave in Claude Sautet’s Un coeur en hiver (1992).  His co-stars Marie-Josée Croze and Christiane Millet (playing respectively Auteuil’s mistress and wife) are just as impressive, both harrowingly convincing as hapless victims of the cruel vagaries of love.  Few films convey the pleasures and pains of romantic love as vividly and with such tenderness as Zabou Breitman’s masterfully composed Je l’aimais.

© James Travers 2010


You have to watch this one.  Daniel Auteuil (Daniel) though wonderful at portraying quiet desperation did better in other movies like the great Girl on the bridge with Vanessa Paradis; here I felt he lacked real passion.  Marie-Josée Croze (Mathilde) is giving a Julia Robertesque performance of a pretty face that girls can identify with/aspire to but  without great self-expression potential. She has very good  looks but the script should have allowed much more emotionally than the protestant restraint she is showing.  The greatest was the supporting actress, Florence Loiret Caille (Chloe) who really enlivens her personage, moves the stage and can energize more with her eyes than the entire cast of a Hollywood prêt-a-porter movie.

The original script and the direction by Zabou Breitman are the soul of this great movie.  It starts one way, in one moral dilemma, and it develops insidiously in the opposite direction of the same moral crossroads, taking the viewer into a complete maelstrom of conventional wisdom confusions.  Here’s where you know it’s not Hollywood.  Breitman is probably - along there with Catherine Breillat - one of the best French female directors.  The movie starts gently but, charged emotionally, it suddenly intensifies, then the main love story is exposed in multifaceted detail, the climax is unique and acute, and the end is - as the essence of humanity- hard to classify or justify.  It fades away with great music and lingering thoughts for weeks to come.  A great movie and a must see!

© Dan Gabriel (Toronto, Canada) 2011 

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