L'Important c'est d'aimer (1975)
Directed by Andrzej Zulawski

Film Review

Love hurts, and L'Important c'est d'aimer goes further than most films in driving home the painful truth behind this well-worn adage.   Directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski (one-time assistant to the great Andrzej Wajda), the film takes the familiar romantic melodrama and subjects it to a kind of Godardian deconstruction (an impression that is reinforced by Georges Delerue's hauntingly melancholic score, evocative of his music for Godard's Le Mépris).  The result is as uninhibited and crazily disjointed as any of Zulawski's other films, but there is also a solidity to the film, a truth and humanity which somehow bleed through the chaotic mise-en-scène and frenetic camerawork.  Whilst many of Zulawski's subsequent films would be marred by a surfeit of stylistic self-indulgence and histrionic hysteria - exemplified by such horrors as Possession (1981) and La Femme publique (1984) - L'Important c'est d'aimer achieves a far more equitable balance of style and content and is easily one of the director's more considered and engaging works.

Zulawski had little difficulty attracting talented, big name actors for his films, but here he is particularly blessed with the kind of cast that most self-respecting film directors would kill for.  Austrian beauty Romy Schneider and Italian heartthrob Fabio Testi are perfect casting choices for the two lead roles (both are ideally suited for characters who lose themselves in quiet introspection), but the supporting roles are all just as well-cast.  Newcomer Jacques Dutronc (at the time better known as a singer than an actor) manages to hold his own against established performers Claude Dauphin, Roger Blin and Michel Robin (all excellent).  Klaus Kinski (flawlessly dubbed by Michel Duchaussoy) is at his most deliriously flamboyant as an unhinged actor (whose interpretation of Shakespeare's Richard III has to be seen to be believed), but he is just one of many grotesques the film throws at us like a mutant clay pigeon machine gone horribly berserk.

Whilst Testi and Dutronc are equally superb as two latterday gallants tormented by the shifting morality of an amorous infatuation, both are effortlessly eclipsed by Romy Schneider as she turns in what is, arguably, the performance of her career.  Not long before she made the film, Schneider had separated from her first husband, Harry Meyen, and had gone through an acrimonious and costly divorce.  Her real-life traumas are no doubt reflected in the performance she gives in this film, a film that proved to be chillingly prophetic.  Mirroring the fate of her husband in the film, Meyen would subsequently commit suicide, the first in a series of tragic personal disasters that would propel the actress to a premature death. 

L'Important c'est d'aimer marks a watershed in Schneider's career, finally laying to rest the ghost of Sissi, the role that had first brought her fame in the 1950s, and ushering in the darker, more intensely introspective performances that would define her final years in front of the camera.  From the very first shot of this film we know what is in store for us, that Romy Schneider is going to subject us to the emotional equivalent of a striptease.  She is without mercy and the pain she projects onto the screen is too real, too nuanced and keenly felt to be a mere simulation. No wonder the role won her her first Best Actress César.

Film Synopsis

A freelance photographer, Servais Mont, falls in love with Nadine Chevalier, an aspiring actress who, having failed to make the big time, has no other option than to appear in cheap exploitative movies.  Although Servais and Nadine are attracted to one another, they maintain a distance.  Nadine is still emotionally dependent on her husband, Jacques, himself an insecure man, and Servais is unwilling to rush into a new relationship, fearful that base desire may corrupt the purity of his feelings for Nadine.  Knowing that there is little chance he will ever be able to pay the money back, Servais obtains a loan from his underworld employers to finance a production of Richard III, in which Nadine will play the main female role.  Predictably, the production proves to be a massive flop and Servais realises he may have lost his once chance of winning Nadine for himself...