Le Mariage à trois (2010) - film review

Auguste is a 50-something playwright who is having difficulty completing his latest play.  To facilitate his work, he invites the two actors who are to star in his play to his house in the country.  To complicate matters, one of the actors is his ex-wife Harriet, and the other is her current boyfriend Théo.   Although Auguste still has intense feelings for Harriet, he has begun to fall in love with Fanny, a young student who is living with him and helping him with his play.  But Fanny shows little sign of being interested in Auguste, and she appears to find Théo a more interesting proposition...

In Le Mariage à trois, director Jacques Doillon once again explores the intricacies of the human heart, but in a far lighter vein than he is known for.  After his last film, Le Premier venu (2007), an intense romantic drama, Doillon’s latest cinematic offering could be mistaken for a light divertissement.  It is certainly a sunnier piece, reminiscent of a Rohmer or Rivette comedy, the sun-saturated verdant setting bringing an impressionistic sheen to the proceedings, but this does not mean that it is any less incisive, or any less cruel, than Doillon’s previous films.  If anything, the sunny composition and the less formal mise-en-scène make us more aware of the darkness and the pain that lies beneath the surface.  Love and desire are serious matters, even when the sun is shining.

As ever, Doillon assembles an exceptional cast of supremely talented actors, so there is little to reproach on the acting front.  Of particular note is Julie Depardieu - she has seldom looked more alluring on camera, nor given a performance with as much nuanced sensitivity.  Her scenes with Louis Garrel have a sizzling erotic charge, and Garrel’s own contribution is almost as praiseworthy, a brooding presence which adds texture to the mood of the piece, even if he is hardly cast against type (as a stroppy, hyper-sensitive actor who fancies himself too much).  Pascal Greggory, an actor renowned for the subtlety and finesse of his art, brings depth and complexity to his portrayal, a tragicomic individual who is torn between two loves - the woman he once loved and the one he now seeks to possess.  There is a subtle poignancy to Greggory’s performance that perfectly counterpoints the film’s humorous elements and makes his character, an egocentric, strong-willed and overly impulsive writer, inexplicably likeable.  Agathe Bonitzer (daughter of the well-known screenwriter and director Pascal Bonitzer) has the hardest job, but she succeeds admirably in making us interested in her introverted, sexually ambiguous character who could easily have been eclipsed by those of her co-stars.   The one and only disappointment is Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, who is relegated to a bland supporting role, a massive let down after his extraordinary turn in Le Père de mes enfants (2009).

If Le Mariage à trois has something of a Nouvelle Vague feel to it, that is probably because Doillon employs some of the techniques used by the French New Wave filmmakers - exterior sequences shot in natural light, use of camera movement to avoid having to break a shot and (more importantly) entire scenes improvised by his actors.  In some cases, the improvisation works extremely well, bringing a startling naturalistic quality to what we see on the screen.  In other cases, it just looks amateurish and slows the pace of the film to an interminable crawl.  With a little fine-tuning, restraint and editing, this technique could have made this a remarkable film, rather than one that is merely sporadically brilliant.  Fortunately, the quality of the acting and some imaginative camerawork carry the film through its occasional slips and longueurs.  Whilst Le Mariage à trois is uneven and periodically lacking in focus, the authenticity that Doillon and his cast invest in the film make it easy for us to overlook its shortcomings and enjoy it for what it is - a light-hearted meditation on the crazy vicissitudes of amorous infatuation.

© James Travers 2011

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