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How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 20 June 2011
This a movie review of THE WIDOW OF SAINT-PIERRE. |
“What’s that look?” Pauline (Juliette Binoche)
Two acting titans of French cinema knock it out of the park. A story about a couple ahead of their time, in a film that feels so bravura. Jittery handheld camera-work covering the working class and smooth tracking and panning capturing the aristocracy, which transforms into uniform stylishness with Dutch angles and balletic movement, straight away I was hooked. What could have been a staid period piece as stuffy and fusty as an unaired attic, instead is as gripping and passionate as a modern romance dreams of being.
Two acting titans of French cinema knock it out of the park. A story about a couple ahead of their time, in a film that feels so bravura. Jittery handheld camera-work covering the working class and smooth tracking and panning capturing the aristocracy, which transforms into uniform stylishness with Dutch angles and balletic movement, straight away I was hooked. What could have been a staid period piece as stuffy and fusty as an unaired attic, instead is as gripping and passionate as a modern romance dreams of being.
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1849 – St Pierre and Miquelon, Second French Republic – a colony near Canada. Two men drunkenly kill, without being in control. Racked with remorse they admit their guilty. One to be transported, the other to be executed. The former is killed by the small community, while the latter, Neel Auguste (Emir Kusturica) wishes it had been him that had died. The community is so small it has neither a guillotine nor an executioner, and Auguste is to be held in custody until both can be obtained. The captain of the area’s detachment also is in charge of the prison. This Captain (Daniel Auteuil) is wed to Madam La (Juliette Binoche), an aristocrat who married beneath her. Both are profoundly in love. As she says to him, “Everything you like, I like”. They show Neel consideration when most wouldn’t. They see in him a decent man, who made a horrific mistake. With that in mind, they allow him out of his cell and encourage him to help the community with the jobs that need to be done; but without ever treating him like a servant. And that is what this picture does so well, it explores notions of mercy and the ability to earn forgiveness; as well as the price of (com)passion.
Even today, with political rhetoric on crime, so few films investigate so well the idea of rehabilitation, other than in a trite way. THE WIDOW OF SAINT-PIERRE also reminds me of the compelling novel, 'Snow Falling on Cedars' – the aftermath of a death in a sea town, where individual foibles and strengths are put under the microscope systematically to form a fascinating whole.
