L'ennui
Saw this really good movie today. I'm going to end up like this guy, except without a hot chick to drive me crazy. I can drive my own ass crazy without some chick.
In the French film "L'Ennui" 40-something Philosophy professor, Martin (Charles Berling) has a brief, chance meeting with an artist named Meyer. A few weeks later, Martin goes to Meyer's house and discovers that Meyer is dead. This leads Martin to Meyer's mistress and model, the 17 year-old, bovinesque Cecilia (Sophie Guillemin). Martin is fascinated by the notion that Cecilia is somehow responsible for Meyer's death--to put it delicately, Meyer died in her arms. And this rather morbid fascination leads Martin to a relationship with Cecilia. At first, he can't understand what Meyer saw in her--she's dull, dumpy, and so placid, you wonder if she's been lobotomized. Martin correctly--if somewhat cruelly--tells Cecilia "you seem very ordinary." However--Martin's relationship with Cecilia isn't about conversation--and this is just as well--it's about savage eroticism--every day, several times a day, in all sorts of different positions. Cecilia offers herself quite willingly, and yet at the same time, she remains oddly distant. For her, erotic encounters are somewhat like eating meals--it's no biggie, and you do it several times a day.
Their established routine rapidly becomes a habit--with Martin as the obsessive addict, but then one day, Cecilia wants to change the rules, and at this point, Martin loses control of the relationship--and of himself--and the situation quickly spirals out-of-control.
L'Ennui is driven by a very clever idea and a curious understanding of the perverse quirks of human nature (and male sexuality.) It's classic male fantasy turned nightmare: an older man falls for a younger girl who is beautiful, naive, sexually voracious, and utterly pliant. It's a pornographic dream that gradually becomes more and more hellish to the middle-aged protaganist, who is disillusioned with life (the French call it "ennui"), and groping for some kind of meaning. For, ironically, the utterly sexually available girl cannot be possessed; she is utterly opaque, and because he cannot inhabit her mind, cannot make her feel intensely for him, he becomes neurotically obsessed by her, which, of course, leads to all kinds of abjection and abasement for him. In this, the film explores the tension between the male dream of feminine passivity, and the male nightmare of feminine impassivity.
L'Ennui falters quite a lot; it's turgid, and probably forty minutes too long, hammering the point home long after the emotional terrain of the film has been traversed. Still, it's an intriguing film, often blackly funny, insightful, and, erotic in the way only French films dare to be, all jiggling flesh and too much reality for audiences reared on the smoothed over nothingness of Hollywood.
In the French film "L'Ennui" 40-something Philosophy professor, Martin (Charles Berling) has a brief, chance meeting with an artist named Meyer. A few weeks later, Martin goes to Meyer's house and discovers that Meyer is dead. This leads Martin to Meyer's mistress and model, the 17 year-old, bovinesque Cecilia (Sophie Guillemin). Martin is fascinated by the notion that Cecilia is somehow responsible for Meyer's death--to put it delicately, Meyer died in her arms. And this rather morbid fascination leads Martin to a relationship with Cecilia. At first, he can't understand what Meyer saw in her--she's dull, dumpy, and so placid, you wonder if she's been lobotomized. Martin correctly--if somewhat cruelly--tells Cecilia "you seem very ordinary." However--Martin's relationship with Cecilia isn't about conversation--and this is just as well--it's about savage eroticism--every day, several times a day, in all sorts of different positions. Cecilia offers herself quite willingly, and yet at the same time, she remains oddly distant. For her, erotic encounters are somewhat like eating meals--it's no biggie, and you do it several times a day.
Their established routine rapidly becomes a habit--with Martin as the obsessive addict, but then one day, Cecilia wants to change the rules, and at this point, Martin loses control of the relationship--and of himself--and the situation quickly spirals out-of-control.
L'Ennui is driven by a very clever idea and a curious understanding of the perverse quirks of human nature (and male sexuality.) It's classic male fantasy turned nightmare: an older man falls for a younger girl who is beautiful, naive, sexually voracious, and utterly pliant. It's a pornographic dream that gradually becomes more and more hellish to the middle-aged protaganist, who is disillusioned with life (the French call it "ennui"), and groping for some kind of meaning. For, ironically, the utterly sexually available girl cannot be possessed; she is utterly opaque, and because he cannot inhabit her mind, cannot make her feel intensely for him, he becomes neurotically obsessed by her, which, of course, leads to all kinds of abjection and abasement for him. In this, the film explores the tension between the male dream of feminine passivity, and the male nightmare of feminine impassivity.
L'Ennui falters quite a lot; it's turgid, and probably forty minutes too long, hammering the point home long after the emotional terrain of the film has been traversed. Still, it's an intriguing film, often blackly funny, insightful, and, erotic in the way only French films dare to be, all jiggling flesh and too much reality for audiences reared on the smoothed over nothingness of Hollywood.
posted by Basil Epicurus at 8:42 PM
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