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L'amour et la mort, just things to think about while suspended between realms. The crux is expanded from Godard's Weekend, here the car accident is splintered, rewound, slowed-down and freeze-framed, "five or six seconds" stretched into endlessness. The victim (Michel Piccoli) is a Parisian architect who envisions "gardens, not garages," young lover (Romy Schneider) and estranged wife (Lea Massari) embody the dilemma in flashback. Rhymes and contrasts, shimmering sailboat in family vacation and views through rain-speckled windshields, blissful romps and bitter quarrels. The cigarette-dangling sophisticate at the carrefour, sized up by the frustrated mistress: "You love me because I'm here. But if you have to cross the street to get to me, you're lost." Claude Sautet finding his sweet spot, the twinge of melancholia underneath the glaze of affluence. Parents and their indiscretions, kids and their novelties. (A little Truffaut gag has the teenage son tinkering with a sideline of mechanical pets.) The happiness of a romantic decision is cut short, soon the protagonist is face down on the grass while his Alfa Romeo burns, occasionally his existential ruminations turn to roadside gawkers ("The idiots think I'm dead"). Transitory impressions, a carefree bicycle ride or a friend's cigar, the kind one hangs on to in the back of an ambulance. Bonnie and Clyde is visible, the bickering couple from Wild Strawberries turn up. Vivaldi and smiling faces at an al fresco lunch give the darkening fantasy, the Mediterranean sun yields to overhead lights at the hospital. "I should be in pain, but I'm not." The closing shot blurs lyricism and oblivion, a perfect Sautet image. With Gérard Lartigau, Jean Bouise, Boby Lapointe, Hervé Sand, Betty Beckers, and Dominique Zardi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |