Les Sentiments is a French film comedy-drama first released in 2003, directed by Noémie Lvovsky.  The film stars Nathalie Baye, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Isabelle Carré, Melvil Poupaud and Agathe Bonitzer.  It has also been released under the title: Feelings.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


A newly wedded young doctor, François, and his wife, Edith, are about to start a new life together in the country.  They strike up an immediate rapport with their next-door neighbours, Jacques and Carole, a middle-aged couple with two teenage children.  François is to take over Jacques’ country practice, since the latter has just been appointed to a desk job in the local hospital.  All is sweetness and light until Jacques and Edith start to have an affair…

It is the most banal of subjects – an anodyne tale of marital infidelity resulting in broken hearts, broken relationships and broken china – yet director Noémie Lvovsky manages to bring something fresh to this all-too familiar area of human experience.  The film is structured as a classical tragic love song, with the narrative intermittently broken by cutaways to show us the chorus who provide the film’s unsettling yet atmospheric musical background (it has been done before, but this device works well here, delivering the right emotional punch at just the right moment).

The first half of the film is intentionally light-hearted, replete with some very funny dialogue and visual gags (and, would you believe it, Nathalie Baye doing a comedy erotic dance to “Can’t take my eyes off you”).  This contrasts markedly with the second half, where the darkening mood reflects the disintegration of some beautiful friendships – rather like a sudden and cruel change in the weather on a lovely summer’s day (and no one remembered to bring an umbrella).

Despite some imaginative direction and camera work, Lvovsky doesn’t quite manage to avoid the obvious clichés and the film occasionally feels a little too complacent and superficial.  However, her four lead actors certainly give great value for money.  Jean-Pierre Bacri is as hilarious chasing after a camera-shy cockerel as he is intensely poignant when reflecting on his character’s illicit affair with a much younger woman.  Likewise Nathalie Baye handles the comic and tragic elements of her character very well; her hopeless housecleaning endeavours are as endearing as they are funny.  Melvil Poupaud doesn’t get much to do in the film (a pity because he’s a very talented young actor, wasted in a supporting role like this), but his contribution is far from inconsequential (note that his character is named François – a thankful nod to the director of a similar film, La Femme d’à coté?).

When all is said and done, the film really belongs to Isabelle Carré.  Here is an actress who conveys innocence so well that even when her character starts to get flirty and dirty with Jean-Pierre Bacri and breaks every vow she made to nice guy Melvil Poupaud you can’t help but see things from her point of view.  It is heartbreaking to see her virtually destroyed at the end of the film, unable to comprehend what she has done or why the sky (and several tonnes of stratosphere) has suddenly caved in on her.  It may be a cliché to say it, but hers is a truly memorable performance.

© James Travers 2005

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