Marie-Jo et ses 2 amours (2002) - film review

Marie-Jo lives what appears to be a happy and fulfilled life in Marseilles.  She has a teenage daughter who is about to leave home, and she still loves her husband, Daniel, who runs his own construction business.  But Marie-Jo has a secret that is tormenting her: she is in love with another man, a handsome captain named Marco.  The affair has endured almost a year but, despite numerous appeals from her lover, Marie-Jo cannot bring herself to leave her husband.  Finally, unable to keep up this double life any longer, Marie-Jo decides to tell her Daniel the whole truth…

This film marks a slight departure for director Robert Guédiguian, from the social realist drama into the realms of conventional romantic melodrama.  The move is a slight one, because Guédiguian retains the naturalistic style that bathes all of his films and contributes so much to their rich humanity and poetry, but it is significant.  As the drama unfolds, at the director’s customary unhurried pace, the story and characters assume an increasingly artificial dimension, culminating in an ending which would work well in an early 19th century novel but which appears false and anything but poetic in this 21st century film d’auteur.

Although the film is not Guédiguian’s best (it lacks both lyrical charm and sincerity of his sublime 1997 work, Marius et Jeannette), it has great artistic strength in the form of Renato Berta’s beautiful and melancholic photography, and first class performances from the three lead actors.  As ever, Ariane Ascaride brings depth and poignancy to a thinly drawn character, her introspective portrayal harrowingly conveying a soul that is tormented by an impossible, and ultimately destructive, passion.

© James Travers 2005

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