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The room is dark, light hits the screen, the film has begun. What do we see? Something with the same harsh realism as a summer-holiday home movie, but lilled with energy. Teenagers performing a classical play in an open-air amphitheater. The scene draws its power from the sheer presence of young bodies, a source of both strength and peril for filmmakers. We're hearing the exact language of that era, recorded as music, which means it can be heard 20 or 200 years later with the same intensity, the same sense of truth. Not the truth of what is said, but of how things are said. By whom? For each voice, four sources. Meaning: the character, lhe actor who plays the part, the (female) screenwriter, and the (male) director. This collaborative richness has rarely worked so well, or had such a powerful effect.
It was 1983 when Maurice Pialat released his sixth feature. And at last, after so much effort, so many misunderstandings, half-successes, and terrible public failures (for one who cared so much about the public), with A nos amours he finally took that extra step and came into his own, finding himself exactly where he should have been-and where he'd...