Four films about love and the unexpected.

And if you've stumbled across this post by accident, be aware that it positively oozes spoilers... If you want the surprises to remain surprising, read only after watching...

1.
Courted (a ghastly, smugly punning English title; the original is L'Hermine, which means "ermine", and while bland, at least points in a dignified fashion to the symbolic garb that sets the judge apart from other mortals)
2015, Christian Vincent

This movie homes in on the life of Michel Racine (Fabrice Luchini), a crusty old judge who presides over the Assize Court in Saint-Omer. As luck would have it, making an appearance as a jury member is one Ditte Lorensen-Coteret (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a Danish-born anaesthetist who looked after the judge in hospital six years previously -- and for whom, it turns out, he still carries a torch.

I had two problems with this film. One was that I didn't like Michel Racine from the get-go. Didn't like his yucky flu. Didn't like the way his reputation preceded him (he's known as the double-figure judge, because he always hands down sentences of 10-plus years...). Didn't like the way he is either oblivious to this reputation or doesn't care. Didn't like the way he interrogates his soon-to-be-ex-wife's domestic staff. And so on.

So, when we suddenly start to see that this character has a softer side -- "has childlike fragilities and the sentimental emotions of an adolescent" -- I was more appalled than touched. Which I'm sure wasn't the intention. But is it not somehow concerning to feel that our fate in a court of law will be influenced by the judge's emotional wellbeing...?

And aside from that, we really don't know what successful, elegant, self-aware career woman Ditte sees in him...

My second problem with Courted is that it can't make up its mind what it is trying to do. It was billed, on the platform where I viewed it, as a crime drama, a comedy, and a romance. I'm not sure it's possible to successfully be all those three things.

The most interesting element is undoubtedly the insight it gives into the French judicial system. Choosing the jury; hearing the evidence (often from people who don't do themselves any favours); dealing with constant interruptions and disturbances; not actually knowing, even at the end, exactly who is guilty of what -- it's all very believable.

And it did have its comedic moments (Racine's insistence on being called "Monsieur le president" not "Monsieur le juge" constantly falls on deaf ears, for example; and the jury members bicker amusingly among themselves about totally random topics...)

But as a "romance", its surprises left me cold.

I much preferred Haute Cuisine.







2.
Carol
2015, Todd Haynes

This is a touching portrayal of how tough it was to be in a same-sex relationship in the United States of the 1950s... On the one hand, you're corralled by secrecy; and on the other -- most ironically -- you risk having your privacy invaded by sleuths sent by the husband who is divorcing you (because he needs to gather evidence for the "immorality" that constitutes grounds for losing custody of your daughter...)

The first of the two protagonists is the refined and elegant Carol (Cate Blanchett), who is married to the well-to-do but rather cruel Harge (Kyle Chandler). As the New Yorker succinctly puts it, "somehow, a whole bad marriage is contained in the monosyllabic thud of his name".

Carol's foil is Therese (Rooney Mara), who works behind the counter in a New York department store, and successfully -- and somewhat unconventionally -- sells Carol a train set for her daughter. The two women meet a few times, and there's obviously a chemistry. Eventually, feeling that she's fighting a losing battle where custody of her daughter is concerned, Carol invites Therese along on a mad-cap road trip, which is the catalyst for a deeper relationship.

While their connection is loving and gentle, you can't escape the thought that if Carol were a man, she would probably come across as predatory... She's so much older, richer, more sophisticated, and more experienced than Therese... There's absolutely nothing non-consensual about any of it, but the skewed power relations between the two women do give pause for thought.

It's undeniably less creepy than it would be if this were a heterosexual relationship. Why? I don't know, but as soon as you exclude the gender difference, and the whole patriarchal burden that comes with it, you do, it seems, rob the other inequities of a lot of their sting... I think... But I'm open to being corrected.

In any case, the relationship is not destined to flower without trauma. Horrified at the utterly invasive snooping that Harge has set in motion, Carol feels that her best course of action is to separate herself from Therese, who is understandably very hurt by what she sees as desertion.

But the story does not end in tragedy. Carol comes to realize that she cannot live a lie, even for the sake of her daughter: "What use am I to anyone, to her, if I’m living against my grain?" She sets herself up independently, gets a job, and invites Therese to live with her. Therese initially demurs, but eventually seeks Carol out, in the midst of a crowded restaurant, to telegraph a silent but heart-warming "yes".

The movie was based on a novel by Patrica Highsmith (The Price of Salt, published in 1952 under a pseudonym). Kate Arthur comments: "With few exceptions, fictional narratives about the lives of LGBT Americans in the pre-Stonewall era were largely stories of self-hatred, punishment, pathology -- and even death. They were also often enshrouded in subtext in order to obscure their queerness under layers of plausible deniability... But... [in Highsmith's book, the] central love story between two women has a surprisingly hopeful ending."

Whereas the relationship was initially secretive and shame-inducing, now it's open and joyful: "'It's not really until they come together at the very end of the movie that you feel that they're kind of on solid ground,' [director Todd] Haynes said. 'They're stepping out of that isolation, and maybe taking the first steps toward something real.' As for what will happen next, Haynes said, 'I like that you don't really know.'..."

Carol is beautifully shot, proffering an ongoing parade of "exquisitely observed minutiae from the early 1950s". And Carter Burwell's swelling music -- reminiscent, we thought, of Philip Glass -- adds a wonderfully atmospheric subtext.



3.
Only the Animals (Seules les betes)
2019, Dominik Moll

When Evelyne Ducat (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) disappears, and her car is found abandoned in the wintry landscape of mountainous southern France, the police have little clue as to what has happened.

From this premise springs a veritable paper chain of surprises... They are revealed to us in an episodic narrative, in which different points of view gradually come together to give us a complete (well, almost complete) picture of events.

Let's start with Alice (Laure Calamy), an agricultural insurance agent, who loves Joseph (Damien Bonnard), a depressed and hermit-like farmer, who is struggling to recover from the death of his mother. Joseph loves Evelyne -- except she's already dead, and her body has mysteriously turned up on his farm. He conceals it for a while, and sleeps tucked up alongside it, before eventually consigning it to a ravine, and following it into the depths...

So how did Evelyne end up dead? Well, Evelyne is loved by Marion (Nadia Tereszkiewicz). But whereas Evelyne just sees this as a brief fling, the much younger Marion is very definitely smitten. She follows Evelyne to her holiday home, but the older woman doesn't want her to stay there (definitely a predatory relationship, this one). So Marion finds accommodation in a nearby caravan, and ends up having a nasty argument with her disappointingly uncommitted love interest.

Meanwhile, Alice's utterly miserable husband, Michel (Denis Menochet), loves "Armandine". Or at least he loves the online pictures that have been fed to him as part of a scam by Armand (Guy Roger "Bibisse" N'Drin), an Ivorian con-artist. Armand, meanwhile, loves Brigitte (Marie Victoire Amie), the young woman who has borne him a child, but is now romantically (aka financially) attached to a mysterious older, richer Frenchman.

Unfortunately, the person in the photos of "Armandine" that Armand sends to Michel looks very like Marion, and when Michel spots Marion in real life in his home area, he tracks her down, with the aim of making contact, of course, but also of finding out the identity of the nasty person who has -- as he believes -- been pumping "Armandine" for the money that she has been soliciting from him... Witnessing the argument between Marion and Evelyne, he automatically assumes the older woman is the extortionist, follows Evelyne's car, kills her, and dumps the body at Joseph's place (as punishment for his wife's affair).

The film talks a lot about "chance", about the uncontrollability and unpredictability of the events that make up our life. And there's certainly an awful lot of chance here... I was on board until the very last twist, when it turns out that Brigitte -- the one for whose benefit Armand has been doing the scamming -- has been brought to France by Evelyne's widower, who is the Frenchman she has attached herself to... That just seemed a piece of egregiousness too far...

My other hesitation concerned the scenes shot in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (one of our former homes). Black scamsters; the strange figure of Papa Sanou (Christian Ezan), who is part gang boss, part shaman; the kept woman -- is it not all just a little stereotypical...?

Still, it's an interesting movie, that has plenty to say about the loneliness that drives us to look for love in all the wrong places.

Which brings us to the title... Some suggest that it's a kind of shorthand for "only the animals know". That is, the animals we see on screen -- whether goats, sheep, or dogs -- "form a tapestry of eyes, omniscient and undeniably mute witnesses that no-one will ever come to question". The film is based on a novel (which has the same title), and this review of the book suggests an alternative interpretation: "Inspired by the theme of loneliness, Colin Niel decided to devote his novel Only the Animals to the physical and psychological isolation of the French farmers of the Massif Central -- a choice which partly explains the title because, according to him, it is only animals that do not suffer from loneliness..."





4.
45 years
2015, Andrew Haigh

This is a quietly devastating movie... Geoff (Tom Courtenay) and Kate (Charlotte Rampling) are about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary when the body of Geoff's erstwhile fiance, newly emerged after 50 years in a Swiss glacier, sets off a depth charge under the marriage.

Geoff is clearly crushed by the reawakened memories of the woman he still calls "my Katya". And Kate is totally blindsided. She knew there was a Katya, but she obviously had no idea about the seriousness of the relationship, or the tragic nature of its conclusion. She knows none of it should matter. It all happened before the two met. Yet it haunts her. While her husband is out, she climbs up into the loft to look for clues. She finds some old slides -- the click of the projector is the sound the movie opens with -- and she is mesmerized. Surely, Katya is pregnant (Kate and Geoff have no children, but we're not told why). And how similar the two women look... And why so many photos of Geoff and Katya when there are hardly any of Geoff and Kate?

So Kate starts to wonder whether all this time she has been just a substitute for Geoff's first love -- whether all this time she has been the understudy who stands in for the lost but ultimately irreplaceable Katya, the second-best who can never entirely make up for the loss of the first choice, the ordinary woman who has to compete with a memory (and now even a body) that has never aged...

They carry on. Geoff bumbles around repairing things. Kate walks the dog. But there's been a change. Geoff is smoking again. He's talking about going to Switzerland to view Katya's body...

The couple go on to have their 45th anniversary party. Geoff makes a decent enough speech. Together they dance to the same song -- Smoke gets in your eyes -- that was played at their wedding. He's happy. But as the camera lingers on Kate's face, we see that she very clearly isn't.

That song, after all, is essentially about loss, not love...

Aside from this sad central story, the movie also takes a long, hard look at the ghastly business of aging.

At the beginning, Kate still seems active, warm, capable.

But Geoff, with a major illness behind him, seems a little woolly, a little indolent (paradoxically, it is the news of Katya's discovery that galvanizes him into unwonted activities like going into town and taking a walk). He has become embittered, too, resentful of erstwhile colleagues, and scathing about the changes that have been made in his former workplace.

Even before the devastating discovery that leaves Kate looking out across an existential chasm, there's little in the relationship that speaks of vibrancy or excitement or fun. They seem (or seemed) contented. But everything is in the muted shades of the English countryside in winter. There's a kind of emptiness that hangs in the air, as though they have left their lives behind somewhere, and are now just going through the motions.

A haunting movie. One of the best I've seen.