Le Mariage à Trois , Jacques Doillon

The English version of this entry is just after the trailer.

Auguste, dramaturge de son état, fantasme encore la présence de son ex-femme, qui dit-il le visite parfois. Son rêve éveillé est interrompu par l'arrivée de Fanny, « la fille dans les étages » étudiante en droit qui s'occupe de son courrier. Il lui dit qu'il a des invités, et que s'il se fait trop chier il viendra la voir... Ainsi commence Le Mariage à trois, nouveau film de Jacques Doillon, mettant en scène le sublimissime Pascal Greggory.

Les invités sont les deux acteurs qui vont jouer sa pièce et leur metteur en scène. Cette rencontre qui devait porter des éclairages sur le texte d'Auguste est en fait une excuse pour son ex-femme Harriet ( formidable Julie Depardieu qui enfin a le droit de déployer toute sa féminité) de lui présenter l'homme qu'elle va épouser Théo ( classieux Louis Garrel) car elle espère les réunir dans un ménage à trois, à cinq... peu importe...

Si les premières 5 minutes m'ont légèrement désabusées, le reste du film est une envolée drôle, émotive et déchirée dans les tourments du désir , du jeu et de l'amour. Harriet dit que ses hommes sont « fous à aimer » et c'est bien de la douceur de leur folie dont il est question. Auguste après chaque révélation remonte dans les étages pour chercher le calme auprès de la jeune fille, le film est rythmé par cette montée dans les étages, et aussi comme dans un conte de printemps par les nombreuses echappées érotiques des personnages qui comme dans une spirale finissent par rencontrer les étages...

Prenez des personnages à priori cérébraux et laissez les être décérébré par la joie de vivre, le plaisir de réapprendre à aimer, et de céder toujours à la tentation. Le mariage à trois est brillant, il brille de milles feux. Comme c'est agréable de voir un film qui parle de l'amour sans morale et sans limitations, qui embrasse la folie d'aimer.

Je vois ici et là dans les critiques que je survole des allusions à Marivaux et à Bergman,je dis, pourquoi pas? Mais ce film, comme chaque oeuvre de Jacques Doillon reste un objet unique. D'abord parce qu'il laisse s'épanouir la poésie, la sensibilité et la fantaisie de Pascal Greggory, qui parade comme un coq immature montrant son corps parfait à son rival, puis remonte dans les étages pour réaliser qu'il a été ridicule et qu'il devrait s'excuser. Ensuite parce que son style d'écriture et ses enjeux sont profondément originaux. La présence de Greggory, tous ces discours sur l'amour, la maison à la campagne... font aussi beaucoup penser à Eric Rohmer pour qui l'on convoquait aussi très souvent le fantôme de Marivaux.

Récemment je me disais que les plus grand acteurs, sont ceux qui sont capables de montrer la dévastation de l'amour et du désir sur leur visage; la pâleur qui passe lorsque l'on va perdre l'objet de son admiration, ou la pâleur qui passe et la respiration qui s'arrête lorsqu'on va le gagner. Greggory est un virtuose car comme il dit dans le film « je suis un bon acteur, j'arrive à croire à ce que je dis ». Le regarder est comme disait Truffaut « une joie et une souffrance ». Il est probablement un des plus grands acteurs français et jamais il ne se commet dans les comédies stupides, son goût est impeccable.

Le mariage à trois est frais, puissant, émotionnel et drôle, comme il ne bénéficie pas de beaucoup de publicité je vous encourage à aller le voir!

Auguste, a play writer, fantasize the presence of his ex wife, when he hears the car of the girl in charge of his mail. He tells her, that some guest are about to come, and that when he'll be bored with them, he'll visit her. That's the way « Le marriage à trois », the new jacques Doillon's film begins , starring the sublime Pascal Greggory.

The guests are the two actors who are going to present his play and their director. This meeting which is supposed to enlighten the meaning of August's text, is in fact an excuse for Harriet (his ex-wife/actress, wonderful Julie Depardieu, finally having a part that assume her femininity)to make him meet her future husband, Theo (the very classy Louis Garrel), because she hopes to gather them in a wedding at 3, maybe 5 , maybe more...

If I felt quizzical during the first 5 minutes of the film, the rest of it swept me from my chair, in a funny, emotional and torn surge in the torments of desire, of game and of love. Harriet says that her men are « crazy to love » and this film is really about the softness of their madness. Each times something hurts Auguste, he goes upstairs to find the calm with Fanny ( the girl upstairs). The whole film is rythmed by these visits and like in a spring tale,also by the erotic episodes, games of desire and excitation. Like in a whirl those visits upstairs also become erotic...

Take characters who at first seem to be bergmanian brainiacs, and let them be decerebrated by the joy of life, the pleasure to learn to love again and to always embrace the temptation. Le mariage à trois is brilliant, it sparkles like a diamond, and it's wonderful to see a film that talks about love without limitations, deprivations, moral and which embraces the madness of loving.

Here and there in the critiques that I vaguely read, I saw Marivaux and Bergman, being mentioned, I say:why not? but this film like every opuses of Jacques Doillon is profoundly original, first because he gives an opportunity for Pascal Greggory's inner poetry , sensitivity and fantasy to blossom. It's hilarious to show him parading like an immature peacock, showing his perfect body to the man who stole his wife, and then realize , once upstairs, that he has been ridiculous and may present his excuses. Then because the style of the script, and the stakes of this story are truly originals.

Greggory's presence, the country house, the speeches about love... also make me think a lot of Eric Rohmer's work who was also very often accused of bringing back the delicate soul of Marivaux.

Not very long ago I was thinking (seeing Patrick Dempsey failing with that kind of emotion in Grey's anatomy)that the greatest male actors are those who are able to show the devastation love provokes in the character's soul on their face. The paleness that rises when they understand that they're loosing the object of their admiration, or the one which cut their breath, when they understand that they will earn it. Greggory is an emotional virtuoso, a stradivarius. Watching him play is like Truffaut used to say about love « altogether a Joy and a pain » . He's probably one of the greatest actors in France and probably in the world and his taste in films is almost impeccable.

Le mariage à trois is fresh, powerful, emotional and funny. I hope that it will travel the world and that you'll get a chance to see it!

Sentimental Pornography ( homage to Eric Rohmer)

Death is efficiently doing her job these days, and today she took Eric Rohmer who at 89 was still a young man. Like most of you I discovered his work with Claire’s knee, and really loved how he turned in theory and speeches all the questioning about love, and seduction. Though it’s Roger Vadim who made the sixties adaptation of les liaisons dangereuses, most of Rohmer’s opuses questioned the morality of love behaviour. His work was very soon compared to Marivaux’s plays which with subtility, charm and humour explored the mysteries of love and seduction. Being extremely written and non emotional, there was little room left for actors interpretation, Rohmer’s mise-en-scène is also very static and simple and can be compared to Ozu’s who was also interested more in human interaction than in action. I love very much his films and as he was a teacher in my university I could have followed his classes!( he was already quite old)! The Rohmer who touch me the most emotionally is Chloe in the Afternoon!


Here's what I wrote in 2007 in my old blog The Scattered Truth
septembre 08, 2007 :

There was a long time!
There was a long time that I didn't watch films by Eric Rohmer. When I was in my early twenties, I loved them very much, but I made an overdose with the Green ray which bored me to the core! The acting is not very good ,it's almost like filmed books, but it's always, always witty, orignial and clever on the universal subject of Love.
Today I watched two of his films, Pauline à la Plage, Pauline at the Beach, and L'amour l'aprés midi, Chloe in the afternoon.
I won't talk about the first one, because it's not a discovery for me. I have seen it lots of times.
Now about Chloe in the Afternoon, I didn't know that I haven't seen it, of course I got aware of that from the beginning.
It's the story of a married man, who's tempted ,without admitting it, by infidelity. What a pitch! it looks probably like the life of every married man on earth,He dangerously becomes friend with an old acquaintance, a fascinating woman, played by Zouzou, (who strangely says that she will probably become a homeless woman which actually happened to her in real life!) . He's very attracted to her, and you know, you feel that he won't resist her. She admitted her feelings to him and that doesn't stop him to meet her in her room, and dry her properly under her command. But then when she's lying on the bed gorgeously naked, and he begins to undress he sees himself playing with his turtle neck sweater the same way he did with his child. So he opens the tap, let the water run and run away.
Then he calls his wife, and go back home, and they talk properly, like they never did. He was saying to Chloe, the mistress to be, that with her he felt comfortable and that with his wife he was playing a part. So when he comes back to the wife, he drops the mask and she does too, and then you don't think that he's coming back to his bourgeois life because they both free their feeling and she cries, they drop the masks as I wrote, they show who they really are. What we thought during all the film would be the end of their relationship, was actually just the end of the first cycle, of the beginning, of the shallow level where you PLAY house! And now they reach intimacy they're naked but not in their bodies, in their souls!
I think that this film is amazing, I am still gaping, you can't see it because you can't see me, I was truly taken by surprise! Before I hear you judging this man as a bastard, what I love about Rohmer's movies is that they are almost ethnological studies of love in our society, love and desire and animality, which means that there is no judgement and there is no progress possible with judgement, I mean that if this man didn't have this adventure with Chloe he would have become numbed and would have been stuck all his life in the clowney character he was playing with his wife and probably would have finished by cheating on her instead of really knowing her. What I love about this movie is that of course I would have been satisfied if he had slept with Chloe ( because she's great and we don't get to know very well his spouse), but I wouldn't have learnt anything, I wouldn't have been really touched only entertained.
He has this reverie at the beginning of the film that he possesses a medallion that control people’s will power and that without consequences he could sleep with all the women.
Chloe is a polygamist, she doesn't believe in fidelity, she thinks that it is not love to make love to the woman who inhabits your bed, but she just divides feelings between passion and tenderness. Don't you actually become a saint when you approach sin and resist it? When you've been so far in the desire that there is no more chance that you would resist!
Fidelity for this man was from the beginning only words, imposed words, and that it became real the moment he was about to loose it. I've heard so many times, that man is an animal and that animals are not faithful, wolves are, when fidelity is a written rule, it means nothing to be faithful you're just following a law, and you should move on, leave the person. On the other hand if it's dictated by your guts, this means that you're above the shallow level, not above, under, that you're going under the surface to meet your soul, your mirrored soul!
I told you it's an amazing film.