L’Important c’est d’aimer (1975) - film review

A freelance photographer, Servais Mont, falls in love with Nadine Chevalier, an aspiring actress who, having failed to make the big time, has no other option than to appear in cheap exploitative films.  Although Servais and Nadine are attracted to one another, they maintain a distance.  Nadine is still emotionally dependent on her husband, Jacques, himself an insecure man, whilst Servais does not want to less base desire spoil his love.  Although he has little hope paying the money back, he gets an enormous loan from his underworld employers to finance a production of Richard III for Nadine to appear in.  Events take a dramatic turn when Jacques realises he might lose Nadine...

Love hurts, and this film goes further than most in illustrating the point. Zulawski’s style of film making, with its iron-fisted realism and colour-rich photography, creates a romantic drama that is the perfect antidote the traditional sentimentalised love story.  Every scene in the film, from the first to the last, is charged with emotion, feeling a bit like a cross-between a Shakespeare play and a frenzied boxing match.  Zulawski’s achievement is to keep this up for the film’s 110 minute duration without allowing the film to descend into depressing melodrama or, worse, sentimentalised tosh.   And this is in spite of the fact that the plot itself is unimaginably trite and superficial.

Zulawski’s success in this film can only be ascribed in part to his evident skill as a director.  The film benefits from a strong cast of actors, all perfectly chosen for their roles.  Italian actor Fabio Testi is impressive in the role of Servais, his dreamy eyes infinitely more eloquent and expressive than any amount of dialogue.  Former singer Jacques Dutronc play Nadine’s husband, Jacques, the first in a series of the kind of strong roles for which he is now best known.

However, it is undoubtedly Romy Schneider who carries the film, in probably her best performance, that of the fragile Nadine.  Schneider’s portrayal of the character feels so true that it is not difficult to imagine that she is acting out her own life story.  (Schneider herself had a troubled love-life, which led to speculation that her premature death, officially a heart-attack, may have been suicide). Schneider was rightly rewarded for her role in this film by winning her first Cesar.

© James Travers 2001

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