Summary
Marie and Jean Drillon have been happily married for 25 years. One summer, whilst
on holiday in the south of France, Bruno leaves his wife on the beach to go for a swim.
That is the last Marie sees of him. She notifies the authorities of her husband’s
disappearance and returns to her day job - a lecturer in Paris - as if nothing has happened.
Unable to accept that Bruno is dead, Marie continues to think and act as if he were still
by her side - something which disturbs her friends and her new lover, Vincent...
Review
With his first three full-length films (Sitcom, Les Amants criminels and
Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes), François Ozon has earned a reputation
as the enfant terrible of French cinema in the late 1990s. Sous le sable
is an altogether different kind of film, an introspective drama which takes on a
serious subject with maturity and insight. The film reveals in the controversial
young director a talent and sensitivity which has to date been largely obscured by his
preoccupation with shocking his audience and perhaps getting himself noticed. Now
that he has won our attention, François Ozon has the freedom to explore more personal
themes with greater restraint and more measured artistic vision than previously.
Sous le sable marks a definitive turning point in Ozon's film-making career and
is quite possibly the first in a series of major works from a man who looks destined to
be one of the leading directors of his generation.
Compared with Ozon’s previous films, the subject of Sous le sable is both simple
and realistic, and therein lies its seductive charm and devastating power. The film
is about a middle-aged woman, Marie, who is unable to accept the loss of her husband and
who resolutely holds onto the belief that he is still with her. Occasionally, reality
breaks through her spell of denial and self-delusion, like a ray of sunlight breaching
the gap between a pair of drawn curtains. But so strong his her love for her husband
and so reluctant is she to let go that her desire to keep him in the present tense soon
reasserts itself. The film’s effect stems entirely from the way it allows
us to see and experience the world from Marie’s perspective. Seen from a distance,
the character would appear sad, mad or pathetic. The genius of this film is that
it lets us enter into her world, lets us experience her inner disintegration as she struggles
to reconcile her irrational hopes with an inescapable reality.
With a self-discipline hitherto unseen in his work, the talented Mr Ozon shows us the
minimum, just enough to allow his audience to latch onto the mood of his characters and
accompany them on their faltering journey towards oblivion or enlightenement. Watching
the film is an absorbing yet totally unsettling experience. What we are witnessing,
from a privileged position, is the torment of a human spirit collapsing under the effort
of trying to superimpose her flawed mental picture of the world on a reality that she
cannot bear to see. In virtually every respect, Sous le sable is François
Ozon’s darkest, most haunting, most accomplished work to date.
Ozon has stated that the idea for the film came from an unhappy childhood recollection.
Whilst on holiday with his family, he would often see an elderly Dutch couple on the beach.
One day, the Dutch husband disappeared, apparently having drowned, and the disarray of
his wife left an impression on the young François Ozon. When he came to make
the film, over 20 years later, Ozon had difficulty financing it. Having shot the
first part of the film (leading up to the disappearance of Jean), the rest of the filming
had to be put back six months until the director had acquired the funds to finish his
film. When filming was resumed, it was undertaken relatively speedily with Super
16, in contrast to the 35mm film which was used for the first part of the film.
This gives the film a striking point of discontinuity which reinforces the impression
that, after Jean’s disappearance, we are in an altogether different world, that seen by
Marie in her state of abject denial.
However accomplished Ozon is in his art, it is unlikely that Sous le sable would
have succeeded without a strong, hugely talented lead actress. The director and
his film are blessed by a mature English beauty, Charlotte Rampling, who gives the performance
of her career in a role that appears to have been carved out for her and for her alone.
From the first scene to the last, Rampling’s presence dominates the film – the camera
capturing both her external beauty and her internal conflict in equal measure. With
courage and skill which are rarely seen in cinema, the actress takes her character to
the limits of human experience and what we see is a tortured victim who might easily be
any one of us. Cinema is rarely this explicit or effective in depicting an intense
psychological trauma, and for the audience participating in this adventure is both an
illuminating and harrowing experience.
Although Charlotte Rampling is the film’s focus, the supporting actors are well chosen
and each contributes magnificently to the film’s impact. Rampling’s husband in the
film, Jean, is played by the bear-like Bruno Cremer, an actor who is now best known in
France for his definitive portrayal of Inspector Maigret in a popular French television
series. Cremer’s evident earthiness and world-weariness are in striking contrast
to Rampling’s sophistication and lust for life - something which gives the film some bizarre
undercurrents. Perhaps Marie’s reluctance to let go is the product of a sub-conscious
guilt at not being able to cope with her husband’s depression? Or maybe she is aware
of their obvious mutual incompatibility and her delusion is merely her way of fending
off the notion that he may simply have left her? Such ambiguity is an all-pervasive
feature of the film, lending it the feel of a dark psychological thriller, reminiscent
of the work of another great French film director, Claude Chabrol. By not
revealing too much, Sous le sable leaves room for the spectator's imagination,
and piecing together the film's complex strands is one of its many pleasures.
Credit should also go to Jacques Nolot for an equally convincing performance as Marie’s
new lover, Vincent - a character who is, for Marie, no more than a corporeal stand-in
for her physically absent husband. Indeed, Marie's strained relationships with all
of the characters in the film (after her husband's disappearance) emphasise repeatedly
the impression of a woman who is trying to live simultaneously in two worlds. One
of the film’s dramatic highpoints is the vicious confrontation between Marie and Jean’s
mother (movingly portrayed by Andrée Tainsy). The tension in this relatively
simple scene is almost unbearable and provides a convincing trigger which enables Marie
to finally look reality in the face and emerge from her period of denial.
The final segment of the film is daring in its simplicity but it is hugely effective,
with Marie finally having the courage to confront her grief and begin a new life without
her husband. Ozon then comes dangerously close to blowing it all by tacking on a
needlessly surreal ambiguous ending. Fortunately, Rampling's performance is so strong
at this point that this indulgence is easily forgiven. In a curious sense, the film's
ending works quite well, closing the mystery of Marie’s ordeal with an enigmatic question
mark about her future life - a life which, of course, we can only guess at.
Who knows what else may lie there, hidden, under the sand...?
© James Travers 2003
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