Nessieldwi
Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Catangro
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Pete Tar
Almost surreal in its emptiness, boredom, and the incomprehensible melodrama of the main character. I think her motivation is explained by her being in a constant state of boredom and despair, who is briefly given a futile energy when she eroticises the death of a stranger at the hands of a lover and finds a man willing to, briefly, play along with her fascination and give her a slight thrill in a flirtatious acquaintance based on discussing the case. But nothing really happens. At all. Then he says he's leaving, she screams in despair, and then it ends. Was she disappointed she didn't arouse enough passion in him for him to murder her? It's basically a bored wife in a passionless marriage having an extremely brief and relatively mild breakdown that leads to nothing. I had a hard time empathising with her, which unfortunately might be the key to really getting the most out of this film. The mother/child relationship is touchingly portrayed though.There's also an atmosphere of unsettling hostility in the village that I just don't understand the purpose of, but I've noticed that in french films before so maybe it's just how life is over there in a provincial town. It's beautifully made and there's some lovely cinema-photography.
Armand
for the Duras's atmosphere. for the lead actors. for the story, landscapes, dialogs, the piano lesson or for its end. for the illustration of a state of soul as result of a mixture of sin, fear, high expectations and fall. a film about a woman and a man. all in simple manner presented. a town. and few meetings. and level of dark revelation. a film of silhouettes and silence. and it is enough for discover an universe who could be part from yourself. a film about choices. and about a strange form of music. Jeanne Moreau is not a surprise. Belmondo is the perfect choice despite the expectations about other actor if you read the novel. the result - not comfortable but good occasion for reflection. about love. and about versions of Madame Bovary.
Charlot47
The story is extremely simple. When a woman is murdered in a bar, the bored wife of a local employer becomes obsessed with her fate and discusses it with a witness, an unemployed man who used to work for her husband. Without much secrecy the two progress into an intense but unconsummated affair, never even kissing. Yet, like all affairs. it has to end. What counts is the way the story is told. Visually it is striking, in atmospheric black and white widescreen set wholly in bleak winter light in an unromantic little Atlantic port. Workmen in berets and women in headscarves trudge about, while the rich travel in nothing more exciting than a Peugeot. Aurally, the score is mostly the Diabelli sonatina labelled "moderato cantabile" that the woman's child is learning, its light charm a contrast to the darkness of the story. In the bar the jukebox blares out jazzy Latin numbers while sirens from ships and factories interpose a melancholic note.Of the two principals, Jeanne Moreau is the perfect incarnation of a sexy bourgeoise full of unfulfilled longings: the film is worth seeing more than once for her alone. As her nearly-lover, Jean-Paul Belmondo performs manfully and is always interesting to watch, but looking gloomy without animation and conversing literately without any cheerful obscenities are not what we want from him (he was not so happily cast in "La Ciociara" the same year either). Talking is what the two lovers do, this being a French film, but like "L'Année dernière á Marienbad" the dialogue is from a novel not from life. By inserting this layer of artifice over what might have been said in reality, the couple are distanced from boss's wife and out of work man and their affair becomes not real but a product of imagination. While highly dramatic, the agony of the wife is however close to the truth of a woman's heart into which men, whether unfeeling husband or cautious lover, can never quite see. PS For people who enjoy bourgeois rituals being disrupted, like the wedding reception in "Melancolia" or the post-opera gathering in "El ángel exterminador", the dinner party at the climax of this film is a small joy. Shortly beforehand, the wife nips out to the local bar that is full of working men and downs several wines. Once at table, after just managing the fish, she loudly refuses the meat and rushes away to be sick. Not the perfect hostess in 1950s provincial France.PPS Not a few similarities with the 1956 film "Le Sang à la tête" based on a Georges Simenon book "Le Fils Cardinaud". In both, the major employer of a West Coast port loses his neglected wife temporarily but publicly to a young working man.
Bob Taylor
This has to be one of the dullest films of the early Sixties. Remember that Godard, Malle, Truffaut and company had been challenging the traditions of story telling; the world seemed young again, and full of possibilities. Moderato cantabile has nothing of this spirit. It might have been made by an old-guard director like Clément or Delannoy (if they had decided to take a chance on a Duras script).There isn't much energy or interest in this story: what happens in the first ten minutes is endlessly rehashed throughout the remainder. Belmondo is ill at ease here, or at least seems that way to me--there is no chance for any extroversion, exuberance or even anger from the character. Jeanne Moreau is used decoratively (Brook must have seen what Resnais was able to do with Delphine Seyrig in Last Year In Marienbad) and always looks elegant, if never really desperate or anguished. You know something's wrong when the piano teacher provides much of the dramatic interest: she's bullying the child into giving her a Diabelli sonata "moderately, with a singing feeling".Note: I have just remembered that Clément did do a Duras script (Barrage contre le Pacifique) in 1958.
