La Parenthèse enchantée (2000) - film review

Whilst on holiday in the Mediterranean in 1969, two friends Paul and Vincent meet and fall in love with two young women, Eve and Alice.  Soon after, Eve becomes pregnant and she is forced to marry Paul, whilst Vincent marries another woman, Marie after Alice’s disappearance.   10 years on, Eve is having an affair with Vincent and is ready to separate from Paul, and Alice has re-appeared and is now an outspoken feminist after having had an abortion.

Although this film features an impressive cast who put in some spirited performances, its heavy intellectual pretensions weaken its impact greatly.  The idea of the film certainly has some merit: an unsentimental reflection on the period of the sexual revolution (the years 1969-1981 were christened la Parenthèse enchantée by the eminent French journalist Françoise Giroud).  Unfortunately, its director (Michel Spinosa) doesn’t get anywhere near to exploiting the subject’s potential, and instead of an illuminating insight into how sexual attitudes have changed over that decade, what we get is a rather trivial story of marital infidelity and rupture, with some political stuff seemingly tagged on as an afterthought.  There are some moments of poignancy in the film (and also some occasional flashes of comic brilliance), but these are rather lost by the film’s unnecessarily elliptical narrative structure and uneven pace.

© James Travers 2003

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