UN ET UNE
France, 2015, 115 minutes, Colour.
Jean Dujardin, Elsa Zylberstein, Christopher Lambert, Alice Pol, Rahul Vohra.
Directed by Claude Lelouch.
Writer-director Claude Lelouch came into prominence in the 1960s, winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, A Man and a Woman in 1966. It had the added advantage of a popular theme song and musical score by composer, Francis Lai, whose music also contributes to this film.
It is very French, in tone, characters, emotions, and sexual relationships.
Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) plays a very successful composer of film scores, in a casual relationship with the pianist, Alice (Alice Pol) when he goes off to India to score for a local film, Juliette and Romeo. Very early in the film the audience sees the two central characters, the Romeo a hold-up thief who gets away but whose car knocks down the Juliette, who is morose after being harshly corrected at her dance classes. This is incorporated into the Romeo and Juliet story – though the audience sees comparatively little of this.
The film, rather, the film focuses on Antoine, his career, the story of his father and his mother revealing him just before her death, his search for his father, making himself known and the father becoming a strong fixture in his life. Antoine likes to keep busy but suffers from headaches. On his arrival in India, he is invited to dinner by the French ambassador (Christopher Lambert) and seated next to his wife (Elsa Zylberstein) with long and intense discussions on the meaning of life, transcendence and spirituality and mention of a woman who is the centre of pilgrimage for devotees searching for hope and cure is.
Antoine then accompanies the wife on her pilgrimage, travelling by train through India – and this journey as well as the opening sequences provide a feast of images of contemporary India for the audience – and experience the embrace of the holy woman.
As might be expected, there is a sexual liaison between the wife and the composer, Antoine’s fiancee coming to India, the ambassador turning up anonymously as her driver, phone calls not answered and a confrontation with different secrets and lies.
The film ends four years later, Antoine a great success, Alice a performer – and a glimpse of the wife…
1. The work of the director and his long career? An older perspective on life and love?
2. The French tone of the film, characters, emotions, relationships? The world of cinema, the media, music?
3. The contrast with India, the opening credits and views, the range of images of exotic India, India in the 21st century, pilgrims and rituals, gurus? In the world of diplomacy?
4. The theme of music throughout the film, classical music and performance, music written for films? Throughout the film?
5. The title, relationships?
6. Antoine, his character, his musical talent, the background of his life, his mother bringing him up, the absent father, her revelation before her dying, his tracking down his father, meeting him, the photo, the father and his new awareness, the encounter, the years passing, the father as a stable presence in his son’s life, rehabilitation?
7. Antoine, the affair, introduction to Alice, casual? The effect, his going to India, her phone call and proposal, her arriving in India, the deceits, her breaking with him?
8. The initial aspect of India, the story of the thief and his robbery, the getaway, hitting the girl, his going back to rescue her, the hospital, his arrest? The young woman, at the dance, the instructions, her failure? The film director, wanting to make a film of Romeo and Juliet with these characters, in this setting, using the story, the black-and-white episodes? And the title emphasising Juliette before Romeo?
9. The director, welcoming Antoine to India, his writing of the score, the director’s reputation, his ambitions, Antoine’s arrival, the details of the flight, his headaches? The dinner with the ambassador, talking to his wife?
10. The sequences in the studio, the sequences of the film, the orchestra playing, Antoine and his advice?
11. The ambassador’s wife, the world of diplomacy, her talking at the dinner, serious matters, the meaning of life, of spirituality? The reaction of her husband? His accusation afterwards that she was flirting? Her background, life with the ambassador, his helping her? Her wanting a child? Her interest in Amma, the visuals of Amma, the crowds of pilgrimages, the embraces? The hopes, her travelling by train, Antoine accompanying her?
12. The Amma experience, waiting, the embrace, the effect of the woman, the effect on Antoine – the woman in peace, Antoine and his headaches? The consequent sexual encounter, the effect on the woman, on Antoine? The deceit? Alice and her waiting?
13. Alice, coming to India, the ambassador meeting her and driving her, waiting, their being together, the phone calls and no answer – leading to the confrontation, truth and lies? The consequences?
14. The years passing, Antoine and his career, fame, the airport, the encounter with the wife, her assistant, the child, the cars passing on the road – and the rendezvous and their meeting again? A future?
