April Snow and Les Choses de la Vie
From http://dvdtoile.com/Film.php?id=27646&page=2by Adel –April 30th
Translated from french to english by camille
Will we have snow in April? The question makes sense in this Korean movie where love decides for the weather and the change of seasons. One day, a man runs to the bedside of his wife fallen into coma after a car accident. At the same time, the same place, a woman comes to visit her husband in the coma too. Soon the lonely spouses understand that they should never meet, and that a love can hide another! Face to the silence of their unfaithful spouses, they will join together, then, with disappointed innocence, become lovers in their turn .
April Snow is a psychological drama with purified melodrama, telling a story of sorrow and love squared. The movie has something alike with Les Choses de la Vie of Claude Sautet ; it evokes the impossibility to choose in love, its way out through the car accident and the confession of an impossible love. As in Sautet’s movie, April Snow gives honour to those who remain, cry, suffer, and fight against sorrow, the bitterness which tints it. But the movie does not use flashback. The action happens here and now, only the moment present is important, because it’s only it which remains. All begin again from there, and it’s there that it’s necessary to compose. To compose, it is what the hurt spouses do: they live with it, and by small gestures extracted from their suffering and by becoming attached to each other. In the manner of the film director who shoots by small touchs and small events the love which will be reborn from its ashes.
April Snow is also a tribute to the continuity of love, the assumed love. It comes close to the subject of Love Streams of John Cassavetes. But the acting differs. It is all in reserve, and follows the movement of the repressed suffering which changes and expresses with difficulty. The text is frugal but powerful, not in the flow. Let’s talk about the scene where the unfaithful wife emerges from her coma; she can finally speak again. Her husband, the principal character, is at her side in the hospital room. His wife asks: "You must have a lot of questions to ask me...?" Silence, the husband answers: "At the beginning yes, but not now." After a moment, he says : "Your lover (whom he calls by his first name) is died." Suspension of noise and time, stupor filmed in large shot of his wife. In the next shot, the husband leaves her room and closes the door with her sobs. He goes towards the window at the end of the corridor, at the edge of which he stays, thoughtful and somewhere else. In the following scene we see him sitting in his apartment among relocation boxes. The narration of this passage is virtuoso and full of emotion. The unfaithful wife is at her turn plunged in sorrow, and the fact of referring to it (in sound off) induces respect and compassion towards her. There isn’t any possible manicheism in terms of feelings.
At last the acting of the misled woman, with a timorous grace of a fragile, chaste flower which displays. No crisis, except one tear (the effect in this related scene is very intense) nor hysteria. But not the life force of a Gena Rowlands, not her charisma in this character of a weak woman. A certain presence, yes, but a tiny bit insignificant or exasperating of abnegation. But this is a matter of moments, taste and moral.
The staging of Hur Jin-Ho is subtle, controlled, with excess sometimes, but still remains efficient : the emotion is at rendezvous. The confusion of feelings remains, as well as the precision which is transposed in this movie. We rather like it perhaps less linear, that things were more ambiguous so they look even more to life. But love sometimes knows where it goes.
As this review talks about some likeness between April Snow and Les Choses de la vie, I would like to explain a little bit about this very famous French movie of Claude Sautet.
Claude Sautet was a very well-known French movie director, on 1969 he became famous with “Les Choses de la Vie” playing by Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider and Léa Massari :
Pierre, architect, 40 years old, with a rather complicated life has just have a car accident. As he lies on the ground, paralysing, he recalled his recent life and his unresolved personal problems: his ex-wife Catherine (Léa massari) with whom he doesn’t speak any more, his son whom he only saw episodically and that he doesn’t understand, and his lover Hélène (Romy Schneider) with whom he is enable to cope with the pressure of their relationship. He had just written a letter to her announcing he wants to break their relation but he had quickly regretted it and was on the way to intercept the letter. Now, dying, he recalls everything and finds the value of the things of life….
The story is told almost in reverse, with an assembled montage of flashbacks. This movie shows a deep understanding of human relationships.
In 1993, Hollywood has made a remake of it : it’s Intersection, playing by Richard Gere, Sharon Stone and Lolita Davidovich.
In case you want to know more about this French director, here is the link for a great article in english I found on the net :
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/sautet.html
posted by Toujours_BYJ @ 5/08/2006 09:31:00 AM
7 Comments:
Thank you again Camille!
I would really like to see the Sautet film. I really liked Schneider in "Le Train" - so tragic, yet the last scene was so beautiful...
Richard Gere seems to enjoy doing remakes of French films, but I have to say, he is VERY successful in making a totally new movie out of them. I had never heard of "Intersection", but reading frances's comment, I'm interested in knowing what it is like.
Hi Frances, I think the author of this review saw the similitude of the 2 movies because they're both adulterous love story with a car accident and the difficulties about love, relationship although the endings are quite different.
For me, it's one of the best compliment for dir Hur because Les choses de la vie is a very great and famous movie here.
Hi Flowerbossa, Intersection and Sommersby are 2 remakes of french movie that Richard Gere did. I love them both, if you have occasion, please watch them, I think you will like them.
(Sommersby is a remake of "Le retour de Martin Guerre", Richard Gere played with Jodie Foster)
Yes, I loved "Sommersby"!
I had forgotten that was a remake.
How was the original?
I was not too thrilled with
"Breathless" - a remake of a Godard film. Again, I have not seen the original, but I have a feeling it's quite different...
Oh, I forgot Breathless but it's a so old movie, I think the original played by Jean Paul Belmondo is better.
Well, I prefer Sommersby than the original played by Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, the ending are not the same.
thank you camille... haha, i was just thinking... how strange that the french seem to 'get' what director hur is trying to create whilst his own countrymen failed to see the magic.
thanks so much for everything, dear :)
Hi bb, maybe the Korean who wrote As reviews are not really movie critics so they don't see the real beauty of the movie, in the contrary of the french whose job is only to watch movies then write reviews for magazines and newspapers.
And I also think that AS is really the kind of movie that French critics like.
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