AN AFFAIR OF LOVE (UNE LIAISON PORNOGRAPHIQUE) (director: Frederic Fonteyne; screenwriter: Philippe Blasband; cinematographer: Virginie Saint-Martin; editor: Chantal Hymans; cast: Nathalie Baye (Elle-Her), Sergi Lopez (Lui-Him), Jacques Viala (Interviewer); Runtime: 78; Fine Line Features; 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This is a French romantic story about two strangers living out their fantasy in a Paris hotel on Thursdays for a period of six months. A sensuous woman, Nathalie Baye, in her forties, meets a man online for a casual sex affair, so that she can fulfill her sexual fantasy. Sergi Lopez, also someone who is fortysomething, but according to his version, he responded to a personal ad in a girlie magazine and sent a letter with his photo, which resulted in the two meeting in a bar. In this minimalist tale, the two are interviewed separately by an unseen Jacques Viala, who could never get either one of them to reveal their fantasy, and what's more, they sometimes had different impressions about the affair.
Interestingly, this is a very steamy story, but the sex is not explicit...as the film is more than anything else a love story, about two nameless souls, not knowing anything about each other's lives, but through sex falling in love...yet unable in their six month relationship to find a way to make a declaration of love that sticks.
The story is narrated by the two, through the interviewer's offscreen questions to them about their relationship. Which starts with their first date, as each is visibly nervous, but they proceed to the hotel across the street and have their first sexual encounter behind closed doors. All the viewer finds out about it, is that it went OK and they will be meeting again next week. We also see that they are both sensitive, intelligent and respectable people.
The only time we see them have sex, is when they decide to do it "normally," with the only twist that she's on top of him. This normal sex excites them more than the fantasy she advertised for does, and it is also emotionally unwinding for them, as it brings them closer together than they imagined this relationship would be able to do. It was a great bedroom lovemaking scene, which was intimately done with both humor and passion.
But the viewer, unable to know more than the little he sees about them, can only guess at what draws them so close. The story played more like a gimmick than a real love affair, because after their initial encounters, it seemed rather strange that these intelligent people wouldn't be curious to know more about each other, especially since they were developing a certain bond together.
Yet, on the other hand, the reason this film worked so well, was the illuminated performance by Baye, who was 50 at the time of the film, but looks much younger and has such a touching quality about her, that she is simply ravishing. There was a great chemistry between her and the introspective, quietly handsome Spanish actor, Lopez. And if you add to that the mature script by French novelist and playwright Philippe Blasband and the classy way Frederic Fonteyne directed, it is easy to see why the film was so enthralling. What you get is an affair that turns out to be in surprisingly good taste, but without satisfying the more mundane matters in a relationship. It was as if this was a sex lab experiment, an ideal couple was being tested to see if a purely sexual encounter could spark a more intimate relationship. If the film moved off its experimental mode and let us see the couple act away from the controlled ground rule conditions, this might have been an even much better film.
The film was originally titled "Une Liaison Pornographique." It won for Best Film at Venice.
REVIEWED ON 3/1/2001 GRADE: B+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews