One Life (2016)

Movie
German title	One life
Original title	Une vie
Country of production	Belgium , France
original language	French
Publishing year	2016
length	119 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Stéphane Brizé
script	Stéphane Brizé, Florence Vignon
production	Miléna Poylo , Gilles Sacuto
music	Olivier Baumont
camera	Antoine Héberlé
cut	Anne Klotz
occupation
	Judith Chemla : Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds; Jean-Pierre Darroussin : Le baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds; Yolande Moreau : La baronne Adélaïde Le Perthuis des Vauds; Swann Arlaud Julien de Lamare; Olivier Perrier : L'abbé Picot; Nina Meurisse : Rosalie; Alain Beigel : Georges de Fourville; Clotilde Hesme : Gilberte de Fourville;

A Life (original title Une vie ) is a Belgian-French drama by Stéphane Brizé , which premiered on September 6, 2016 at the Venice Film Festival , where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize for best film in the competition . The costume film is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Guy de Maupassant .

action

In 1819 the young country nobility Jeanne returned to her parents' house in Normandy . The antiquated views and oppressive attitudes towards women in France at that time were not easy for the young woman, but her isolated life, which she spent in the monastery, left her plenty of room to dream. She learned about such seemingly wonderful things as love from books.

At first, Jeanne leads a happy life with her father Baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds and her mother Adélaïde. Jeanne soon marries the stately but impoverished noblewoman Viscount Julien de Lamare. She goes into this marriage with romantic ideas, but when her parents hand over their estate to him, Jeanne is confronted with the tough everyday life, and the married life with Julien turns out to be much less romantic than she has imagined so far, especially this one to her becomes unfaithful.

production

Staff and cast

Judith Chemla , who plays Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds, was nominated for best leading actress at the 2017 César

"What use is wheat if it does not turn gold?"

- prologue

The film follows Guy de Maupassant's novel A life in the year 1883. Before the Director Stephane Brize had already tried other filmmakers to the fabric and after the original book movies like Naiskohtaloita (1947), A Woman's Life (1963) and a woman's life (1958 ) created. “Jeanne”, says the director, “enters the so-called world of adults without having said goodbye to the paradise of childhood, that period of life in which everything appears perfect, in which adults are those who know, those who say that one shouldn't lie, and therefore, one thinks, they shouldn't lie either. "

“What use is wheat if it does not turn gold?” Says the prologue. At the very end of Brizé's film it says: "Life is never as good or bad as you think". According to Wolfgang Nierlin of the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, his adaptation of Maupassant's novel poetically translates the relational content of this quotation into a filmic structure . Their temporal coordinates are constantly in flux, and flashbacks and flashbacks have the effect that the chronology of events is broken up, Nierlin continues. This temporal and mental interrelationship is reinforced by an asynchronous montage of image and sound, so that, for example, words and thoughts of the cinematic present, spoken off-screen, meet images of memory. Nierlin explains that the ugly is counteracted or softened by the beautiful, the heaviness by the light, in order to inspire that spark of hope that life carries within itself.

Judith Chemla took over the role of the country nobleman Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds. Her father Barons Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds is played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin and her mother Baroness Adélaïde by Yolande Moreau . Swann Arlaud plays the impoverished aristocrat and Jeanne's soon-to-be husband Julien de Lamare.

Shooting and film editing

Shooting ended in September 2015 in Mesnil-sur-Blangy, here the Notre-Dame church

The film was shot in Normandy in summer 2015, in Pierrefitte-en-Auge and in the Pays d'Auge . In September 2015, filming was completed in Mesnil-sur-Blangy, also in the Communauté de communes Blangy Pont-l'Évêque Intercom , where recordings were made at the Château de Morainville.

In his review of the film, Felix Bartels from Neues Deutschland noted the consistently hard-working hand-held camera, which, although a well-worn means of cinematic self-importance, actually fulfills a serious purpose in this film: "Jeanne's mind, the constantly fluctuating between desire for harmony and defiant assertion of the same Against disturbances from outside, which then turns into skepticism and struggle, is shown by the restless image. ”This is flanked by the decision to use an almost square 1.33: 1 image format, Bartels continues, which also creates perspective for the The audience is always limited, subjective and internal. Esther Buss explains in Spiegel Online that a life has become a film of hard cuts and rugged ellipses. Regarding the structure of the film, Buss explains that it leaves out the really dramatic turning points as well as the narrative cement: “Brizé is more interested in the much more painful aftermath: like the disappointment over lies and deception in the face and body of the initially about twenty-year-old woman Write more clearly until almost the last spark of hope for life has escaped from it. But the passage of time - the story spans around 27 years - becomes tangible as the seasons change. ”Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Stéphane Brizé's intelligently nested film adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's novel is how it is reflected in the arrangement of fade-ins, cinematic present, Flashbacks as well as flashbacks within flashbacks, the time unfolds less, because claims as inevitable presence, so Buss.

publication

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2016 , was screened two days later at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in French cinemas on November 23, 2016. The film was released in German cinemas on May 24, 2018. A preview in Germany took place as part of the “Ciné - Littérature” program of the Filmforum Höchst at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which was devoted to various cinematic approaches to French literature. There Une Vie was shown as the opening film.

reception

Age ratings and reviews

Swann Arlaud plays Jeanne's husband Julien de Lamare in the film

In Germany, the film was approved for ages 12 and up . The statement of reasons for the release states: “The calmly staged film depicts an oppressive life situation. However, due to their level of development, children and young people from the age of 12 are able to understand the conflicts presented and deal with them appropriately. Occasionally there are dramatic scenes (e.g. the mistreatment of a schoolboy by a pastor as well as killings out of jealousy), but the violence is not sensationally played out, so that viewers aged 12 and over are not to be overburdened. "

So far, the film has won over 80 percent of Rotten Tomatoes ' critics .

Wolfgang Nierlin from the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung explains that Stéphane Brizé is telling the timeless life story of a young country noblewoman from the middle of the 19th century along with the changing seasons: “The recurring work in the garden, the cycles of plants determined by a divine nature and reaping, appears as a reflection of a pure, sensitive soul. The garden inspires hope, embodies pain and gives consolation. ”In a reduced and concentrated manner, Brizé follows the disappointments and downfalls of his heroine, Nierlin continues, whereby the director renounces conventional dramaturgy and instead uses the turning points and climaxes of his narrative out of sudden to let abrupt ellipses speak. According to Nierlin, the director locks his unhappy, increasingly lonely heroine in the narrow, almost square Academy image format, and Jeanne's life becomes a prison.

Brigitte Häring from SRF explains that Une Vie tells a large part of this unhappy woman's life in stations, and Brizé succeeds in the feat of bringing this sad life and this loneliness to the screen very authentically, while at the same time making an airy, light-flooded film. Although Une Vie is a costume film and is set sometime in the 19th century, Häring continues, the film is very modern in its design: “It jumps back and forth through the ages, is shot very directly, almost with a documentary look. It's strange in a costume film, but it works wonderfully. "

The film is based on the novel A Life , here the title of the French edition from 1883

Gunda Bartels writes in the Tagesspiegel that in his rejection of the decorative cuddle of country nobility romances, as we know them from the Jane Austen films of the nineties, Brizé's adaptation of the first novel by Guy de Maupassant resembles the costume drama Lady Macbeth by the British theater director William Oldroyd . Bartels continues: “Where he describes the angry rebellion of a woman of the 19th century in a puristic Kammerspiel setting, Brizé now tells of the silence of an upright in luminous gardens and on stormy shores. But although Jeanne also refuses to play the rules, A Life is less clearly laid out as a social study of a woman of her time. "

In comparison with the literary source by Maupassant, Martin Walder of the Swiss film magazine Filmbulletin remarks that the very long arc is told very differently in book and film, but is equally precise in observing an announced surrender to the diversity and potential of what a life could mean: "The renunciation of a promise of happiness is cruel, and the last sentence of the novel and film belies forgiveness if Jeanne is to give herself to the care of her grandchild." Judith Chemla , as Jeanne, has a stupendous presence in everyone Age, says Walder, and notices the wealth of facets that are touchingly inscribed in the grace of her face.

Knut Elstermann from MDR Kultur also notes that Chemla is infinitely changeable as an actress. Thanks to Brizé's bold direction, the film would have nothing dusty, says Elstermann: "The modernity of the film language, splintered thoughts and jumps, shifted sound and image levels, rich associations bring this woman so close to us as if we could actually watch her remembering."