Summary
Desperate to find the money to pay their rent, two adolescent girls Cécile and
Samira attempt to hold up a jeweller’s, but it all goes wrong. Samira is arrested
and Cécile turns to a lawyer Michel Farnèse to defend her, having found
his business card in a wallet she stole earlier. Michel agrees to defend the two girls
in court, but his wife Viviane suspects that his motivations are more to do with lust
than charity. Sure enough, when Michel wins the case, he begins a passionate affair
with Cécile. However, Cécile’s former boyfriend Vincent is none too
keen on this development and is determined to win her back…
Review
The idea of a wealthy middle-aged man abandoning his wife and home for a much younger
woman in a doomed romance is hardly virgin territory, but once in a while a film is made
which seems to re-invent the formula with astonishing freshness and impact. En
plein coeur is one such film. It is a film which engages the spectator from
the very first scene and careers along at a fair pace, never letting up the intensity
of the drama for a second.
The film is based on a popular novel, En cas de malheur, by French writer Georges
Simenon, best known for his detective fiction (including the Maigret series).
The novel was first made into a film in 1958 by director Claude Autant-Lara, a film which
saw the remarkable (and scarcely believable) pairing of Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot.
Forty years on, the story has lost none of its impact and flair, although Pierre Jolivet
makes the youth culture more visible in his film to emphasise the difference between the
two worlds inhabited by the wealthy lawyer Farnèse and the penniless loser Cécile.
The film is brilliantly assembled as a frenzied psychological thriller. All the
way through, the audience is aware of a sense of impending doom, which adds a hopeless
tragic dimension to the love affair. The drama in the last twenty minutes is palpable,
with a whole spectrum of human emotions brilliantly captured on film.
The acting performances are, almost without exception, genuinely impressive, and it is
this which gives the film its impact and credibility. The casting is near-faultless.
Virginie Ledoyen is the lively but vulnerable kid unable to choose between not just her
two lovers, but also the two worlds they offer her. Gérard Lanvin plays the middle-aged
lawyer who rediscovers youthful love and is unable to resist it, even though he may lose
everything as a result. Carole Boquet is stunning as Lanvin’s cheated wife, conveying
moods ranging from blind incomprehension to venomous fury with equal conviction.
Then there is Guillaume Canet who plays Cécile's shady ex-boyfriend, providing
a genuine sense of danger and menace without really appearing the villain of the piece.
The film is perhaps a little tainted by its somewhat dated portrayal of love and infidelity,
relevant in Simenon’s day, but less acceptable to today’s more sophisticated cinema audience.
Rather than tackle that potential fault head-on, you feel that Jolivet is using his impressive
cinematography to paper over the cracks. Look too closely, and the film may just
fail to convince. However, viewed from an acceptable distance, it impresses as a
compelling, vibrant and entertaining piece of cinema.
© James Travers 2000
See also: En cas
de malheur
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