Plein sud (1981)
Directed by Luc Béraud

Film Review

After making an impressive directing debut with La Tortue sur le dos (1978), Luc Béraud won himself further favourable criticism with Plein sud, a darkly comedic portrayal of obsessive love.  This provided a tailor-made role for its lead actor, Patrick Dewaere, with whom the director had worked on an earlier film directed by Claude Miller, La Meilleure façon de marcher (1976), one of several films which Béraud scripted for Miller.  Béraud had also been an assistant not only to Claude Miller, but also such distinguished filmmakers as Jean Eustache (Mes petites amoureuses) and Jacques Rivette (Céline et Julie vont en bateau).  Béraud never attained the aristic heights of these illustrious auteurs but he did direct three idiosyncratic films for the cinema before embarking on a prolific career in television.
 
Largely as a result of Patrick Dewaere's typically committed performance, Plein sud is mildly shocking in its portrayal of the destructive power and absurdity of an amorous infatuation.  Anyone familiar with Dewaere's work on better known films - notably Alain Corneau's Série noire (1979) and Bertrand Blier's Beau-père (1981) - will know just out utterly convincing the actor can be in a role skewed towards his talents and persona.  Béraud probably wrote the film with Dewaere in mind, allowing him to bring his own peculiar lunacy to the part and thereby make the film a sure-fire winner.  The coldly alluring Clio Goldsmith provides the perfect contrast with her co-star, slippery ice to his raging fire - an unlikely pairing that savagely underscores both the tragic and farcical dimensions of the excessively torrid love affair.

Things take a much darker turn in the film's second half, when Jeanne Moreau and Guy Marchand enter the frame just as Dewaere's honeyed paradise spectacularly inverts and starts to resemble a Kafkaesque nightmare as events run increasingly out of control.  The film starts to lose its coherence and intensity at this point, although there's some hilarity to be milked from the Buñuelesque situation the characters now find themselves in, stranded in Spain whilst France crumbles under a series of political upheavals that lead to a civil war.

Plein sud isn't the most memorable of romantic comedies but it is certainly entertaining, its uneven pace sustained by some eccentric flourishes and Dewaere's irresistible tragicomic turn as a likeable goon succumbing to the most merciless of birds of prey.  After this amiable little oddity, Luc Béraud directed one further film, La Petite amie (1988) - the flop that led him to turn his back on cinema until he was tempted back by Anne Le Ny to script her 2010 film Les Invités de mon père.

Film Synopsis

Serge Laine is a 30-something philosophy professor who is on his way to Barcelona by train to attend a university conference and enjoy a second honeymoon with his wife.  His well-laid plans go somewhat awry when he meets Caroline, an attractive young woman for whom he develops an instant fascination.  After putting an end to an affair she has been having with a minister of state, Caroline has committed herself to a bizarre resolution: to give herself to the first eligible man who comes her way.

Once he is in the power of this monstrously seductive woman, Serge can offer no resistance.  He submits willingly and within hours of their first meeting they are caught up in the most passionate of love affairs.  Convinced that he has met the woman of his dreams, Serge is ready to give up everything for her - his wife, his work, his money, his sanity.  But is Caroline as equally committed to the relationship, or is she merely playing a game for her own dubious motives...?