After the phenomenon that was "La Boum", Sophie Marceau was faced with a dilemma; either continue making commercial features, or change her image by taking part in auteur films. She opted for the latter, rejecting Claude Pinoteau's -the director's who discovered her- "La septième cible" and playing the main roles in Maurice Pialat's "Police" and Andrzej Zulawski's "L'amour braque". It was with the latter that she also made "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours", a film about madness , love and how they intertwine.
This film doesn't exactly have a plot. Its meaning is in the dialogues, conducted by a mentally ill woman and a physically ill man. Her, child of an abusive household, works as a medium and performs a spectacle between striptease and theatre, in which she predicts the future of any of the spectators that asks her. Him, a computer programmer, has invented a new programming language, but doesn't have much time to celebrate, because he suffers from a terminal disease. These two meet and discover that they can share their deepest fears, their hopes, but, most importantly, their ideas. They talk using intricate metaphors, and symbols, words that rhyme. Essentially, the French language is made use of to express the love between these two beings. This is a film as much about its ability to convey complex thoughts and concepts as much as it is about romance.
Romance isn't the only thing explored in "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours"; Madness is too. For, both heroes feel love as something different than most people. They are insecure, unique, want to find someone as intricate as them. They don't say "I love you". Instead, they resort to metaphors, indirect means of expressing what they feel. Is it because they can't? Is it due to their past having made them to emotionally cold to feel? It could be both. The important thing is that they are so different from all others in terms of behaviour that they could only end up together, and its their madness that lets them live their romance with such passion.
Both Sophie Marceau and her co-star, Jacques Dutronc, showed this mindset perfectly. Dutronc was a yéyé singer, popular for his subversive, revolutionary lyrics. His charm and coolness was wanted among directors, with Steven Spielberg asking him to play the villain in Indiana Jones, and Dutronc refusing only because he didn't speak English. Was this a sing of arrogance, or of real knowledge of oneself? To me, something in between.
The aforementioned choice of Sophie Marceau to participate in "L'amour braque" instead of "La septième cible" is also indicative of a mix between arrogance and self-knowledge. It is known in the world of French show business, that when she told Claude Pinoteau that she was leaving the film, in order to take part in Zulawski's movie, he got irritated. He felt betrayed. The actress whom he had discovered, simply rejected his work, considering it too restricting for her image. And so, he let her go, but with a heavy price, both metaphorically and literally: she was forced to pay a big sum of money so as to cancel her contract. It was this lack of interest for others, combined with the will to improve one's position with the help of a kindred spirit, that characterised "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours".
"Ordinary" is not a word I would use to describe this film. "Sweet" neither. "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours" is a special kind of film, a director's vision of the love between two outcasts, of which the only possible conclusion is the lovers' death. That I didn't like it maybe serves more to show its uniqueness than its flaws. But, for me, this uniqueness just took away all of the romance, and the ambitious language only made their love seem artificial. As artificial as the weapons of a thriller.
The weapons of "La septième cible".
