POST COITUM, ANIMAL TRISTE By Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Ognon Pictures Director: Brigitte Rouan Writer: Brigitte Rouan, Santiago Amigorena, Jean-Louis Richard, Guy Zilberstein, Philippe Le Guay Cast: Brigitte Rouan, Patrick Chesnais, Boris Terral, Nils Tavernier, Jean-Louis Richard, Francoise Arnoul A teen-aged boy tells this story, which is at the heart of the movie...A mouse wanders around the railroad tracks when a train comes and cuts off his tail. The mouse does not notice this until he arrives home. The next day he runs back to the tracks to search for what's missing when a train comes and cuts off his head. The moral of the story: If you chase tail, you'll lose your head. "Post Coitum, Animal Triste" is the story of a woman who chases tail, so to speak, who loses her head, but who gets an opportunity to set it right back on again. It's a love story--and the French know about such things--and it goes against the stereotype that French romances are talk, talk, talk and little action. There is some interesting talk, all right, but the passions are so strong that the visceral reactions of the principal character Diane Clovier (Brigitte Rouan) will make you squirm. This girl-gets-boy, girl-loses-boy story engages us because of the way director Brigitte Rouan cleverly weaves a subplot into her principal focus, but even more because of Ms. Rouan's remarkable acting. She has the uncanny ability to change from a writhing, despair-ridden, suicidal victim of lost love, as we see her in the opening scene, to a woman involved in her career, then on to a peak of sexual frenzy and ecstasy and back again, playing all parts beautifully. Diane proves that women can have mid-life crises that easily rival those of the male gender. She has hit the big 4-0, has a job of some power at a small publishing company, enjoys the love of her husband and two teen kids. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing, that is, provided that no outside force intervene. But when the 20-year-old friend of a writer she is encouraging, Emilio (Boris Terral), literally sweeps her off her feet, her love-at-first-sight becomes an addiction for both. They meet, sometimes openly in a park, in one instance brazenly in a public ladies' room, where they consummate their affection with utter freedom. All the while Diane must try to get one of her authors, Francois (Nils Tavernier) to overcome writers' block--he claims he cannot understand a woman's desires. Conveniently enough, Diane has a new experience to help him over the hurdles. In a fascinating subplot involving the gruesome and sudden murder of a cheating man by his wife of 43 years, Madame Lepluche (Francoise Arnoul), Rouann, successfully adapting the screenplay she wrote with four others, shows us yet another way a mouse can lose his head by chasing tail. Helpfully, Mme. Lepluche is defended in court by Diane's loving husband Philippe (Patrick Chesnais), and will be able to use his own cuckoldry to try to move the jury. "Post Coitum Animal Triste," which bears the French title "Un Certain Regard," closed the 50th Cannes International Film Festival 1997 before being screened at New York's own annual festival. It includes one visual which is particularly humorous of Diane literally floating on a cloud while in the throes of her new passion and a convincing chemistry between Diane and the lover who is twenty years her junior. The enormous trouble which marital betrayal brings hits home in this movie through both a swift but graphic murder scene involving a woman who stabs her cheating husband in the neck with a carving fork--and the break-up of Diane's own family through her own mad fling. "Post Coitum" is wonderful at bringing out an adage repeated by Diane: "When you're twenty and love goes wrong, you cry because you think you'll never love anyone again. After 40, you cry because it's far more likely that you never will again." Not Rated. Running Time: 95 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten
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