After waking up early for “Tui Na”, I was thrilled that today’s first film was going to start at 5pm. Of course that still meant that I went to the box office early to get tickets, but at least I could spend most of the morning resting. Overall, I think I would prefer a Berlinale day with 3-4 movies that starts at 12pm and ends at like 9pm, but that is so difficult to achieve. At this Berlinale, we only managed a nice schedule like that on Friday, on day 8.
Arrête ou je continue (If you don’t, I will)
France 2014, Sophie Fillières, 102′
Pomme and Pierre are in the kind of marriage in which they feel like they spent too much time with each other. While they still do things together like going to art galleries and weekly hiking trips, there is the strong doubt that there is still love left in that relationship. Frustrated, Pomme decides to not go home after one of the hiking trips and just stay in the forest for awhile to sort out her feelings.
Death count: 0.
I don’t actually watch a lot of relationship films anymore, but back in the day they were my favorites. Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” and Linklater’s “Before…” series are probably the best examples, and I think they both are masterpieces. Nowadays, I still enjoy these films but I don’t hold them in such a high esteem anymore. Even so, “Arrete ou je continue” is a perfect example for it.
I think my views on relationship changes on something like a yearly basis. Back when I was a teenager it probably changed on like a monthly or even weekly basis. When I watched “L’Eclisse”, I think I ended up crying because the estrangement between the characters reflected the estrangement I felt in my own relationships. Today, I don’t even know what I would think about “Jules et Jim” anymore. What I’m trying to say is that my impression of relationship films are always tainted by my current feelings on relationships, and so my view on the films are strongly biased and dependent on the exact time I saw them. Not really a good foundation to write a blog post on, I think. Strangely enough, it bothers me when I know exactly that my blog posts are not timeless, and it appears that I do strive for some sort of timelessness, I want to think of my own opinions as something that doesn’t jitter around.
Well, “Arrete ou je continue” is about two people who think about ending their relationship. My current stance on ending a relationship is that if a relationship is fine, it will not end. To be honest I thought that the protagonists here had a fine relationship. They never really had any problems to begin with, they are faithful and do activities together that both enjoy, and they were able to have a reconciliatory moment towards the end. So I guess I was a little surprised and iffed by the ending. Luckily that ending only lasted some two minutes, so I could just as well pretend the entire film ended two minutes before. It helps my enjoyment of the rest when thinking that way.
Otherwise, the film is absolutely marvelous. It totally hit home even though my own relationships seems to be the exact opposite of theirs. But the things couples say to each other – when the dialogues are written right, they seem so universal. It’s as if every single couple in the world quarrels in the same way about the same things and makes the same mistakes. I find it beautiful to watch Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric do that, and it was indeed the two of them who were the reason I watched the film in the first place. As you all know, I am a little afraid of overly intellectual talky French films, but the combination of those two promises to be brilliant, and it was. I think it was lovely to see Emmanuelle Devos’s character in her mid-life crisis, and Mathieu Amalric’s slightly helpless character tumble through life.
The best reason to love the film is that it is set in Lyon. You don’t really see much of Lyon, but I could tell it was Lyon by the bus going to Croix-Rousse at the very beginning of the film. French films are so set on either Paris or the countryside, nobody seems to realize that Lyon is actually the best French city and I am glad that this film goes against the tide there.