SEVENTH HEAVEN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Zeitgeist Films Director: Benoit Jacquot Writer: Benoit Jacquot & Jerome Beaujour Cast: Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Lindon
In "Gone With the Wind," which is now enjoying a revival with a spruced-up sound track, Rhett Butler says to Scarlett O'Hara, "You need kissing." Substitute the word the studios would use in the 90s for what David O. Selznick chose for the 30s and you'll get an idea of what Butler believes would make Scarlett a happier person. This speculation carries over to Benoit Jacquot's "Seventh Heaven," or in the French, "Le Septieme Ciel." Jacquot, fascinated by his psychoanalytic readings on the role of the unconscious, focuses on a 28- year-old anhedonic woman, unable to experience pleasure in life, presumably because she has never had an orgasm. The picture takes her up to and through her first--and second--period of sexual bliss and how her sudden change affects her husband.
If you did not get to see "Bliss," last year's most underrated movie, you can take in Jacquot's film, the closest thing to Lance Young's creation. "Seventh Heaven" has a similar theme with parts that seem virtually plagiarized from that genuinely fascinating work which was filmed in 1995. "Bliss" focuses on a nonorgasmic wife who joins an army of women seeking help from a sex therapist, Baltazar (played wonderfully by Terence Stamp). When she is swiftly liberated, her husband becomes suspicious, follows her to the analyst's studio, and has a violent showdown with the good doctor. "Bliss" is sometimes clinical but at its core is full of action, a swiftly-moving often quite humorous take on the profession of psychoanalysis and a showcase for Mr. Stamp's considerable talents.
Unfortunately, "Seventh Heaven" does not approach its prototype in any regard. Shot virtually in real time as is this director's inclination, it is yet another example of arty French film. It's talky and clinical, loaded with the sort of stuff with which novels and perhaps the stage do a better job. Its principal character, Mathilde (Sandrine Kiberlain) has none of the appeal of the gorgeous Virginie Ledoyen. Ledoyen's star-making performance in Jacquot's 1995 film "A Single Girl" fashioned a bright slice-of-life story about a 19-year-old woman who faces pressure in her job as a room service waitress in a fancy hotel. When a smile crosses Kimberlain's face--which it does only in the final segments of the movie--she's captivating. In other scenes her wall-eyed asymmety dampens potential audience appeal.
Kiberlain, the 28-year-old wife of a surgeon eleven years her senior, is first seen as a blurred image on the camera, an obvious metaphor for her clouded mind. She walks the streets of Paris in much the way that Julianne Moore's Carol White wanders around her own home in Todd Haynes's "Safe": eclipsed as though her body has been taken over by impurities that deaden her chance for joy. She shoplifts aimlessly, stuffing the toys into a trash bag at home; faints when she's caught or else for no apparent reason; and one day runs into a strange man on the street who calls himself a hypnotist and invites her to an expensive restaurant for her first session. This doctor (Francois Berleand), a serious man who never smiles, urges her to practice feng shui, a Chinese system of living harmoniously. Though moving her bed to face a recommended direction does not help her to attain orgasm, a second session does. When her husband Nico (Vincent Lindon) beholds his own success in giving her pleasure in bed, he becomes ironically turned off, scared, as though she were doing this to show him her independence. His anxiety drives him into the office of another hypnotist and into a confrontation with a man he believes to be his wife's practitioner--the only comical episode in the story.
To Jacquot's credit he occasionally summons some of the mystery of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly as we observe the strange encounter between Mathilde and the doctor on the street. We wonder what the man has in mind by escorting her to a salmon-and-wine luncheon, why he insists on her paying him in cash, what he will do with the ring she leaves with him as a security deposit. Ultimately, little is made of these incidents which are supposed to be taken as clues to the doctor's character, nor are we really clear on husband Nico's paradoxical reaction to his wife's new and giving personality (unless this successful surgeon is aghast that she could be so independent-minded).
The film is decently acted by Vincent Lindon as the bewildered husband who, like physicians everywhere, cannot tolerate the existence of alternative therapies. Jacquot, hwoever, is too vague throughout. He states, in an inteview, that his girls "are born to be alone, and they find their freedom knowing they are alone." What freedom? Mathilde is an unhappy woman who finds pleasure only when she finally connects. When she is "free" of others, she is sickly and overrun with a compulsion to steal. People talk as they might in real life, not really advancing the plot as much as dropping sound bites about the healthful properties of sex and union. Finally, "Seventh Heaven" is as pretentious and serious as the two hynotherapists employed by the fragile couple.
Not Rated. Running time: 91 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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