Je l'aimais (2009)
Directed by Zabou Breitman

Film Review

With just three films under her belt, actress-turned director Zabou Breitman has already established herself as one of France's most capable filmmakers, renowned for her explorations of the rich complexities of human relationships in her exquisitely crafted dramas.   After the superlative Se souvenir des belles choses (2001) and L'Homme de sa vie (2006), Breitman surpasses herself with her latest sensitive survey of the human soul, a compassionate account of an adulterous love story that is doomed to end in tears. Je l'aimais is a truly heart-wrenching film, intelligently scripted, skilfully directed by a mature and confident filmmaker, and performed with exceptional finesse by some supremely talented actors.

Adapted from Anna Gavalda's best selling novel, the story is simple to the point of banality.  A married middle-aged man falls in love and pursues a passionate extra-marital affair with a young career woman.  The affair ultimately goes nowhere and the male protagonist is left with a lifetime's worth of regrets, which he later unburdens on his daughter-in-law when her own marriage hits the rocks.  There is no more to the story than this, and yet Breitman and her cast make it an epic tale of tragic love that is so intense, so realistically played, that it genuinely does stir the emotions and make you want to rip off Eros's wings and dissolve them in acid.

As in all her films to date, Breitman is fortunate in her choice of actors.  Daniel Auteuil gives a devastatingly truthful performance as the man who, almost by accident, falls headfirst into a passionate love affair only to find that he hasn't the guts to sustain the relationship.  Auteuil is a past-master when it comes to playing reluctant lovers and his tortured portrayal here is on a par with the one he gave in Claude Sautet's Un coeur en hiver (1992).  His co-stars Marie-Josée Croze and Christiane Millet (playing respectively Auteuil's mistress and wife) are just as impressive, both harrowingly convincing as hapless victims of the cruel vagaries of love.  Few films convey the pleasures and pains of romantic love as vividly and with such tenderness as Zabou Breitman's masterfully composed Je l'aimais.

Film Synopsis

For twenty years, Pierre has been carrying with him a secret that he has been unable to share with anyone.  One evening, he decides he must confide the one great tragedy of his existence in his step-daughter Chloé.  He knows her well enough to be sure she will understand and sympathise with him.  With regret, he recalls his love affair with Mathilde.  It was the most perfect time of his life, and Pierre cannot remember when he was happier.  At the time he wasn't wise enough to realise how rare and beautiful a thing true love is.  Foolishly, he let it slip from his grasp so that he could follow an easier path, a path that has led him to his present state of bitter self-recrimination.  If only he had had more courage, more sense to hold onto the treasure he had in his hands for so brief a time, all those years ago...