What an incredible film!
This ethereal experience comes to us through the consciousness of new widow Christine (Marie Belle), a woman of wealth and sensitivity who is "alone in the world" -- but for misty memories of her first ball, 20 years earlier, at age 16. "One must know how to live -- I never learned."
So Christine sets out to find the young men with whom she had danced on that night of far-off youth. What she discovers both moves and stuns her. She's a consummate listener, that rare soul on whom nothing is lost.
"Girls are cruel at 16 -- unaware of the pain a single word can cause." Ah, yes, how very true, I recognized as the mom of an 18-year-old boy. There are many moments of recognition in this film.
It's powerful to see how the men are affected by Christine's reappearance. Most remember her distinctly.
There's failed lawyer and petty thief Jo, with whom Christine had explored the poetry of Francis Jammes (who penned "Marie, je vous salu," immortalized by the Georges Brassens ballad).
Then there's "mon pere," the priest who had aspired to compose and now patiently directs a choir of rowdy boys. "I've seen many die," he tells Christine, on learning she's a widow. "People think I have everything," Christine tells him. "My life is empty." Others in the teenage musician's audience had been rapt at his creation, but Alain had noticed Christine distracted by another boy, and it changed his life's course. "God has been good to me," he says. "He led me to seek."
Then there is a rugged, skiing mountain man. Christine can envisage remaining with him. But he's fatally restless, unwilling to focus, refuses to say she was pretty. There's been a fatal avalanche, and "Il faut que j'aille," he says. Ah, the man who can't commit -- I also know him well! Wisely, Christine departs.
And, le maire. He recognizes Christine instantly, as if she's never left his mind -- "J'etais fou de toi." His ability to appreciate runs deep. Despite success in leadership, this man's been bitterly stung -- in the form of an adopted, hooligan son. We sense he'll find some comfort in his new bride -- "I'm lucky to have you, old girl." (Along the way we learn he nearly drowned for Christine: "A fellow who has never drowned himself for a woman has never been young.")
And then there's a half-blind doctor, a veteran of Indochina and "the bush," seemingly reduced to performing abortions for a living, but too depressed by a horrible marriage to leave his bed most of the time. He finds a moment of hope in being called a friend, and imagines "perhaps reading the same books" as the lady traveler.
Once back at home, Christine muses that "not a one lived up to his youth." But there's one man left from her dance card -- Gerard -- perhaps the only one of the bunch whose love she'd returned. And Christine finds her happy ending, of a most unexpected kind. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any film ending as happily as this one.
And yet, along the way, for all its musings about love, the movie (for me) shows the folly of moving from the courting stage to one of permanence. This is highlighted by the mayor, as he asks his maid -- and soon-to-be wife -- to call him Sir one more time. There is something in the jump from fantasy to what's real that seems to eliminate the magic.
In the end our Christine becomes a "stepmother." And maybe it's family ties that are as good as it gets.
This ethereal experience comes to us through the consciousness of new widow Christine (Marie Belle), a woman of wealth and sensitivity who is "alone in the world" -- but for misty memories of her first ball, 20 years earlier, at age 16. "One must know how to live -- I never learned."
So Christine sets out to find the young men with whom she had danced on that night of far-off youth. What she discovers both moves and stuns her. She's a consummate listener, that rare soul on whom nothing is lost.
"Girls are cruel at 16 -- unaware of the pain a single word can cause." Ah, yes, how very true, I recognized as the mom of an 18-year-old boy. There are many moments of recognition in this film.
It's powerful to see how the men are affected by Christine's reappearance. Most remember her distinctly.
There's failed lawyer and petty thief Jo, with whom Christine had explored the poetry of Francis Jammes (who penned "Marie, je vous salu," immortalized by the Georges Brassens ballad).
Then there's "mon pere," the priest who had aspired to compose and now patiently directs a choir of rowdy boys. "I've seen many die," he tells Christine, on learning she's a widow. "People think I have everything," Christine tells him. "My life is empty." Others in the teenage musician's audience had been rapt at his creation, but Alain had noticed Christine distracted by another boy, and it changed his life's course. "God has been good to me," he says. "He led me to seek."
Then there is a rugged, skiing mountain man. Christine can envisage remaining with him. But he's fatally restless, unwilling to focus, refuses to say she was pretty. There's been a fatal avalanche, and "Il faut que j'aille," he says. Ah, the man who can't commit -- I also know him well! Wisely, Christine departs.
And, le maire. He recognizes Christine instantly, as if she's never left his mind -- "J'etais fou de toi." His ability to appreciate runs deep. Despite success in leadership, this man's been bitterly stung -- in the form of an adopted, hooligan son. We sense he'll find some comfort in his new bride -- "I'm lucky to have you, old girl." (Along the way we learn he nearly drowned for Christine: "A fellow who has never drowned himself for a woman has never been young.")
And then there's a half-blind doctor, a veteran of Indochina and "the bush," seemingly reduced to performing abortions for a living, but too depressed by a horrible marriage to leave his bed most of the time. He finds a moment of hope in being called a friend, and imagines "perhaps reading the same books" as the lady traveler.
Once back at home, Christine muses that "not a one lived up to his youth." But there's one man left from her dance card -- Gerard -- perhaps the only one of the bunch whose love she'd returned. And Christine finds her happy ending, of a most unexpected kind. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any film ending as happily as this one.
And yet, along the way, for all its musings about love, the movie (for me) shows the folly of moving from the courting stage to one of permanence. This is highlighted by the mayor, as he asks his maid -- and soon-to-be wife -- to call him Sir one more time. There is something in the jump from fantasy to what's real that seems to eliminate the magic.
In the end our Christine becomes a "stepmother." And maybe it's family ties that are as good as it gets.