French actress/director Nicole Garcia (Going Away, Little Lilli, Place Vendôme, A View of Love) has transformed Sardinian author Milena Agus' novel 'Mal di pietre' ('disease of kidney stones'), with the assistance of Natalie Carter and Jacques Fieschi, into a staggeringly creative and hauntingly beautiful film that deals with passion and deep seated imagination. It is another showcase for the brilliant actress Marion Cotillard.
Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José (Alex Brendemühl), an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in Switzerland to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Gabrielle is released from the spa, pregnant and convinced André is the father, and the child Marc develops into a fine concert pianist. But even the most beautiful of love affairs can be altered by a mind in need of guidance and the story ends with surprising changes that make us realize we have been a part of Gabrielle's insanity.
Beautifully filmed and rich in fine acting, this is a quiet film that seeps into our psyche as we feel the vagaries of a tenuously intact mind. A brilliant film. Grady Harp, July 17
Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José (Alex Brendemühl), an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in Switzerland to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Gabrielle is released from the spa, pregnant and convinced André is the father, and the child Marc develops into a fine concert pianist. But even the most beautiful of love affairs can be altered by a mind in need of guidance and the story ends with surprising changes that make us realize we have been a part of Gabrielle's insanity.
Beautifully filmed and rich in fine acting, this is a quiet film that seeps into our psyche as we feel the vagaries of a tenuously intact mind. A brilliant film. Grady Harp, July 17