Mademoiselle Chambon (2009)

Mademoiselle Chambon is a French romantic film drama first released in 2009, directed by Stéphane Brizé.  The film is based on a novel by Eric Holder and stars Vincent Lindon, Aure Atika, Sandrine Kiberlain, Jean-Marc Thibault and Bruno Lochet.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In every respect, Jean is the model citizen.  He is a good father, a good husband, a good worker.  His life is ordered and predictable but he is content.  Then he meets Mademoiselle Chambon, his son’s schoolteacher.  Despite their obvious differences, Jean is strangely drawn to the young woman.  And she is equally taken with him...

With his fourth feature, a quintessentially Gallic portrayal of forbidden love that is crafted with exquisite tenderness and delicacy, Stéphane Brizé confirms his standing as one of France’s leading auteur filmmakers.  Whereas most romantic dramas these days have a tendency to go overboard with the emotions in an attempt to convey the traumas of love, Mademoiselle Chambon takes a more introspective approach that is no less effective and considerably more satisfying.  The film doesn’t throw emotion into our face; it gently arouses the subtlest feelings in our hearts and induces us, rather than commands us, to sympathise with the two protagonists as they reluctantly succumb to that fatal attraction.  

Cast as the star-crossed lovers, Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain both turn in a performance of exceptional quality that will doubtless have the more emotionally sensitive reaching for their hankies long before the credits roll.   The fact that Lindon and Kiberlain were once husband and wife in real life may have something to do with the startling reality of their portrayals.  Much of the power of the film lies in the fact that the characters have a profound reluctance to show their true feelings for one another.  They find it hard to communicate verbally what they feel and yet we have no doubt that, beneath the surface calm, they are both battling against a storm of emotions.  It is through the subtlest of gestures that they reveal the first glimmerings of a romantic entanglement, and whilst we recognise this as a thing of beauty we know also that the ensuing love affair cannot end well.  There are some scenes where Lindon is so visibly tormented by his character’s predicament that you just want to take Eros by the scruff of his pretty little neck and shove him through a meat grinder.

As in his previous Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé (2005), Brizé crafts a low-key drama that is sublime in its authenticity and irresistibly poignant.  The plot is about as hackneyed as a plot can be, mined with clumsy metaphors and clichés that ought to have been pensioned off decades ago, and yet the film still rings true, such is the sincerity and genuine emotional feeling that the director and his talented cast bring to it.  In the hands of a lesser filmmaker Mademoiselle Chambon would most probably have been unbearably trite, the kind of soap-style melodrama that went out of fashion in the 1950s.  It is testament to Stéphane Brizé’s skill as a writer and director that his understated adaptation of Eric Holder’s novel has such a powerful resonance, and a quiet contemplative lyricism which makes it one of the most beguiling romantic dramas in recent years.

© James Travers 2010

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