Après l'amour (1992)
Directed by Diane Kurys

Film Review

With Après l'amour (1991), her sixth feature, director Diane Kurys departs from the autobiographical perspective of her preceding films and expands her field of view to deliver an ironically tinged critique of her generation's attitudes towards romantic relationships.  It is a generation that is ripe for criticism, as Kurys knows full well - the generation that willingly participated in the youth rebellions of the late 1960s but subsequently sold out to bourgeois conformity and capitalist comfort.  The self-absorption, greed and hypocrisy of the baby-boomers has been widely commented on, their endless pursuit of self-gratification now being often cited as the cause of many of today's social ills.

In her film, Kurys seems to show little sympathy for her protagonists who are supreme examples of the class of individual the anti-baby boomers delight in censuring.  The main character, an over-sexed writer desperately looing for the kind of lurid fulfilment that she dispenses so freely to the heroines of her novels, is utterly selfish in her pursuit of her beau ideal, blithely ripping apart hearts and families as menopause comes lumbering towards her.  The men who fall for her are no less pathetic, blind to their responsibilities, they are all too willing to submit to a sexually rapacious man-eater.

As cruelly drawn as the characters are, we are ultimately compelled to nurture some sympathy for them.  As ever, Isabelle Huppert brings to her somewhat unattractive character a startling suggestion of inner fragility, a sense that her behaviour derives from primal forces that she is not in control of, and we come to acquire a grudging admiration for the way in which Lola faces up to her emotional and carnal needs, grabbing what happiness she can before submitting to decay and the slow pull of the grave.  There's a stinging tragic resonance to Huppert's performance that reminds you of her portrayals of similarly sexually tormented heroines in La Dame aux camélias (1980) and Madame Bovary (1991).

Bernard Giraudeau and Hippolyte Girardot likewise bring a twisted complexity to their portrayal of Lola's 'victims'.  Playing against the obvious feminist slant of Kurys's script, both actors succeed in humanising their somewhat archetypal characters, offering contrasting yet equally convincing depictions of masculinity in a world where women are very much in the ascendant.  Girardot is well-suited to play the more sensitive and self-aware of the two willing lovers, his hesitancy reflecting the moral awareness and self-loathing that would come to separate the baby boomers from their glibly critical successors.

Après l'amour is generally less well-regarded than Kurys's previous noteworthy films - Diabolo menthe (1977), Cocktail Molotov (1980), Coup de foudre (1983) - but it breaks new ground for the director and shows a growing maturity in her representation of human frailty.  Through some thoughtfully provocative writing and the incredibly nuanced performances from the trio of remarkable lead actors, Kurys convinces us that the pursuit of happiness is as fraught as it is necessary, although the end result is almost bound to be a crushing disappointment.  Probably not her best film, but it is nonetheless an honest and moving meditation on the abject nature of male-female relationships today, a time when, seemingly, commitment and compassion risk being driven to extinction as we all become ever more prone to the empty thrills of instant self-gratification.

Film Synopsis

For Lola, a 35-year-old writer of romantic fiction, the first pangs of mid-life crisis are beginning to bite.  She leads a comfortable middleclass existence but is far from settled and seeks passion in her life.  Unfortunately for her, the men she is attracted to turn out to be married already.  David, an architect, apparently has no qualms about abandoning his wife and children so that he can embark on a whirlwind romance with Lola.  Tom, Lola's other lover, is more hesitant about walking away from his family, but he finds the free-spirited lady novelist just as seductive.  David would seem to be the easier option, but it is Tom that Lola has really sets her sights on.  Will she ever find the happiness she craves or is she heading for further disappointment...?