This is only my second Bresson, the first being "Balthazar." That was rewarding in a sort of intellectual Norman Rockwell sense. This is not.
If you don't know Bresson, he's celebrated in some film communities for his economy, his approach to cinema that supports one view of what it means to be cinematic. I happened to see this on a day I also saw a Matthew Barney project and within near remembrance of a Tarkovsky.
Watching Bresson gives the same reward as reading one of those stories that omits any use of the verb "to be," or perhaps disallows a certain consonant, or maybe more radically forbids punctuation. You're impressed by the extent to which the artist understands the medium, well enough to negotiate his way around certain conventions. But the art isn't in the artifact, its in the method, the approach, the philosophy.
So if you watch this lucidly, you'll be confronted with that philosophy, and whether you really go along with it. Really, this is serious business, because such questions are the stuff out of which we define who we are not. Sure, its cinematic, but how is what matters.
Its a matter of taking away instead of adding, of closing instead of opening, in some way of the small, the slight but in that, colored by the influence of the insignificant. Intimacies are always small, but loves can be big. Here, it is small, and gentle.
Make your choice.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
