La Maladie de Sachs
1999 Drama
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Credits
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Summary
Dr Bruno Sachs is the general practitioner of a small provincial town in France.
Every day, his patients trundle into his consulting room with their various ailments,
real and imaginary. Although greatly respected by all who know him, Dr Sachs is
becoming disillusioned with his job, and his personal life is virtually non-existent.
Then he meets Pauline, one of his patients, who is instantly drawn to him. As they
embark on an affair, Pauline discovers Dr Sachs’ secret. Since the start of his
career, he has been writing his reflections about his work and his patients in his diary.
Some of his observations are cruel, some are comical, others are profoundly moving.
Pauline realises she has diagnosed Dr Sachs’ illness…
Review
This absorbing and intimate portrait of an ordinary town doctor is characteristic of Michel
Deville's cinema: sombre, slow moving, filled with humanity, and unashamedly naturalistic.
Albert Dupontel is captivating as the film’s central character, Dr Sachs, conveying not
just the sense of ennui of a man who is locked into a life he no longer appreciates, but
also his yearning for some kind of release, for the fulfilment that has so far eluded
him. It is an underplayed, introspective, spiritual kind of film, focused exclusively
on Sachs’ daily routine and his matter-of-fact interactions with his patients. The
repetitive nature of the consultations, the drab colour scheme and the dreary locations
do weigh the film down by they emphasise the sense of aching emptiness that is apparently
pushing Sachs towards self-destruction. The does film somehow ends on an optimistic
note – Sachs finds someone to take care of his “ailment” and his life is given the meaning
that it had previously lacked. In some ways, it is just a conventional love story,
but it is told in the most unconventional way, through the understated feelings of believable
characters, and bled from the tacit realism of everyday situations.
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