French Review of April Snow
After a crazy week-end, today I almost finish all my preparations for our holidays. And I’m happy to be able to finish my translation for this beautiful review of April Snow to post on Quilt, KOB and here on my blog to share.From : http://blogbandeapart.blogs.allocine.fr/blogbandeapart-26514-April_snow_et_la_neige_venait_marbrer_de_sa_douceur_la_rudesse_d_un_mois_d_avril_.htm
April snow… and snow came to marble the roughness of April by its tenderness …
Written by Joak on Bandeapart blog at 19/05/2006 - 22h32
Translated from French to English by Camille.
From a Western point of view, April Snow is a movie all in nuance. Those of decency, or legitimate infidelity.
But it seems sincere from an Asian ones, sublimating the respect and the belonging to the traditions, to lived love and which we don’t want to break.
We have not a past to understand the reasons which hold back their feelings, but the cinema gives us the spirit of it…
The Jin-Ho Hur work is tested, understood by curious extension. Because if we cannot consider these esteemed relations as real and significant, we must admit that by his success in Japan, the movie tends to prove the reflection of a social community which search itself, which does not reproduce any more the example of the elders and which likes to disconnect from its familial environment. Because it is there that Seo-Young and In-su will look for the bases of their relations, in incomprehension, in the loyal support of their lover and in the similarity of their love. Traditional processes where leaves the reflection which promises to open the way to a future separated with the present.
This movie successes on the bets of a luminous delicacy like snow, because this meeting between the two protagonists is consciously improbable, and yet their destiny draws the features of the truth, of an origin founded and composed by immortal values of justice, of start to the sorrow and frightened project.
Which reactions by learning the coma of her husband, his wife?
Which feelings to feel next when they discover that the car accident which has amazed them both is an extra-marital relation incident?
Which look, also shaded of bitterness, but whose frailty is not recent at all, for the woman who discovers herself and her moral imprisonment ?
At the bedside, a present and motionless woman, broken in the flesh, whose betrayal is painfully forgivable because she never feel the force to confess.
In the other side, a beautiful, timid and sensitive woman, broken in the heart, who has for only comfort the desire of a confession deep down in her heart.
This portrayed society is noble, because the heartrending and strong thought of a person does not go over his duty. So, from this impromptu circumstance is born the delivery of the feelings, whose endeavour is only at the beginning of a love life…
The two characters are complex, and even in the depth of their intimacy feel some aloofness. A process which brings them in a love even more intense.
And beyond this magnificence is a complexity of language. A man who uses the “tu” form with his wife and the “vous” form with his lover, as by respect for both, even the sexual phase reached.
This love is not pallid but thick like snow, splendid. It settles gently, most certainly as for not to hurt what it has the most pure: these crystals!
And its colour, white, this sacred symbol in numerous religion… and this last sentence, when all the suppositions open to the spectators, we remain captivated, enamoured of purity while thinking of Seo-Young who does not lend her shoulder to In-su to cry but her reason, her passion and her modest tenderness. That is their love; purified of all dishonest preference.
In this symbolism let us retain this pleasant thought which sets up under this coincident meeting of shared feelings where adultery is not any more this venereal disease…
posted by Toujours_BYJ @ 6/19/2006 10:52:00 PM
2 Comments:
Dear Camille,
Thanks for the translation. It's good to hear that AS is still
viewed by the French cinemas of having audience drawing power.
I guess you must be anxious about the full version of AS coming out in September. I can't wait for the DVD either.
love .... Jaime
Hi Jaime, I hope this version will be released on DVD with english subtitle very soon for all of us.
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