This film takes us through the sadness of a break-up. When a couple drift apart, married or not, there is pain, not just for the two but for those close to them. We see the effects on Catherine's parents and grandmother, and on Jean's wife. Grief at wrong turnings and lost opportunities, at love which no longer sustains, isn't that the stuff of drama, from the story of Adam and Eve onwards?
Yet some reviewers seem unhappy with aspects of the film, citing the unappealing behaviour of the male protagonist, the apparently autobiographical nature of the story, and the apparently unpleasant nature of the filmmaker himself.
Of the latter two I know nothing, yet why should they matter? Is a work of art vitiated if it reflects some of the creator's own life, rather the lives of others or pure imagination? Should "David Copperfield" be shunned because its cast includes Dickens and his father? We now know that Dickens treated both his wife and his mistress unadmirably, but does that invalidate his fiction? What about the many works where we know nothing about the creators, or even their identity?
As for Jean in the film, it is not difficult to identify the defects in his nature and behaviour. They are displayed for us to see, commented on by other characters, and sometimes admitted by Jean himself. Behind the cheap machismo and rampant egotism, there must be factors that have led him into this impasse. In the past he managed to charm not one but two very attractive women into a relationship. Though one's prime sympathy must be for these two women, isn't his downfall, however much self-inflicted, an example for us to contemplate and maybe even pity?
