MARIANNE
A film review by Bryant Frazer
Copyright 1997 Bryant Frazer
GRADE: A-
MARIANNE, which world premiered at the "Rendez-Vous With French Cinema Today" series in New York City March 15, is a lithe adaptation of an unfinished novel by the French writer Marivaux, an 18th century observer of courtship rituals and the human emotions involved. But what's remarkable about the film -- and what drew a sell-out crowd to the Walter Reade Theater on opening night -- isn't so much its literary pedigree. Rather, it's the pairing of director Benoit Jacquot once more with Virginie Ledoyen, the hottest young thing in French cinema and the star of Jacquot's LA FILLE SEULE (A SINGLE GIRL), released last year to limited audiences but wide acclaim. Taken together, the two movies seem nearly to be companion pieces, a strong affirmation of the status of a film's star as artistic collaborator with the director. The differences between the two films are interesting, but the similarities run deeper and give both pictures more distinct meaning.
The footage that eventually became MARIANNE was actually shot in 1994 and shown in a three-hour-long version on French television, bearing Marivaux's original title of LA VIE DE MARIANNE. But that version of the film is superseded, in the director's eyes, by the 90-minute distillation that was shown in New York. Jacquot agreed to make the film on the condition that it would eventually make its way to a theatrical release -- but in order to secure funding, he agreed to script a longer television version at the same time. Jacquot told the audience that he made no distinction between shooting for the television screen and shooting for film -- if he wound up with two different versions of the same shot, he kept the superior one in reserve for the theatrical version and used the inferior take for television.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine how this loveliest of movies would be appreciated on the small screen. First, there's the issue of Ledoyen's abiding beauty, which is magnified to superhuman proportions on the big screen. My favorite example is a scene which cuts between close-ups of her face and that of the actor playing her suitor, Valville (sorry, no press notes). Both young performers are handsome ("It's the face that's important," Jacquot will snap later, when asked about the challenges of shooting costume drama), but what's more striking is the clarity of the image. Valville's face is angles and ridges, sharply defined with only a hint of menace. And Ledoyen's is all rich, gentle curves, the whites of her eyes impossibly smooth and clean, like pools of milk.
Ledoyen's Marianne is an orphaned child whose story we follow after she turns 15. Marianne has no idea who her parents were, but believes she is of noble lineage and carries herself with the bearing of an aristocrat who feels distaste at the thought of consorting with the lower class. (It's to Ledoyen's credit that she can bring this off without playing a petulant brat.) She's taken in by an older man who, like everyone in this film, is taken with her beauty. He puts her up at the home of a linen merchant, where she finds some degree of contentment. But soon he's confessing his love and suggesting that she accept his offer of a private apartment and a monthly paycheck. The thought of becoming a kept woman both shocks and shames her, and instead she takes up residence in a nearby convent. In the meantime, Valville has also fallen in love with her, and while those attentions are more to her liking, they will prove to make her life ever more complicated.
While I could imagine where the television version probably fleshed situations out a bit more, this story moves along at a surprisingly lively clip. Costume dramas are rarely notable for their brevity, but this one is imbued with a spirit and humor that highlights the fogeyism of, say, your typical Merchant Ivory production. Jacquot's direction, which is here very theatrical and there distinctly cinematic, has a lot to do with the film's airy tone. One scene between Marianne and her would-be benefactor is played nearly as stagebound farce, with the camera panning to and fro to catch the two characters tugging each another this way and that. Elsewhere, Jacquot's camera will lurch suddenly toward a character's face in a tracking move worthy of a Spielberg or Scorsese. The end result is eminently watchable and hardly dull.
The effortlessly lush cinematography is its own pleasure, but also augments the fine performances of everyone involved. There's not a false note, even as men and women alike trip over themselves to sing Marianne's praises -- how lovely she is, and how pure of heart -- and even as the story treads into the potentially maudlin territory of jealousy, duplicity, and revenge.
But MARIANNE is truly accessible because of Ledoyen's immensely appealing presence. Ledoyen plays her character as an apparently guileless young woman with smarts in reserve. More than a pretty face, she is, as Valville's mother describes her early on, "alarmingly" beautiful. The camera dances with her here the same way it does in A SINGLE GIRL. It follows her down the street as men spin on their feet to look her up and down and it lingers behind her, evoking the stare of villagers admiring her in church even as we gaze upon the nape of her neck, 30 feet high, from our moviehouse seats.
It's because her performance is as striking as her luminous good looks that we do care what finally happens to Marianne. The film may best be described as an anti-romance. Offers of marriage come at our protagonist seemingly from all directions, but we wind up rooting against her acceptance of any of them. The story does finally culminate in a wedding -- but of Jacquot's invention, not Marivaux's.
"Marriage is a nightmare," the director told his audience after the screening, with just the hint of a rakish grin creeping onto his face. Whether you want to argue that or not, it's hard not to notice that Jacquot's two most recent films paint matrimony as something to be feared. But taken together with A SINGLE GIRL, the basic moral of this tale seems to be that a woman's independence is something for her to cherish. In fact, those of us who believe in reincarnation -- in the cinema, at least -- will likely get the distinct feeling that A SINGLE GIRL functions in part to help set Marianne free.
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