La Douleur

On paper, this film is condemned and doomed to failure. A story about a writer (Marguerite Duras) and her internal dialogs about the waiting of her husband's return (member of the French resistance) could only be seen as something rather repellent. However, the fact that Emmanuel Finkiel delivers a heartbreaking film about this waiting is in itself astonishing and makes this film valuable, rare and beautiful for sure among the must see films' list of 2017. So how come did Emmanuel Finkiel end up with such a good movie ? Well there are several ingridients of course , but one of the secrets leans on the fantastic actors the film features and the way the characters were written: Melanie Thierry as Marguerite Duras of course, way above all the rest, so unsettling and seductive, torned apart and brave, but also, quite surprinsgly Benoit Magimel (recently so deep and good actor in recent years) with a deep twisted role of a cop you never end up to decipher completely. All this is accompanied by a beautiful and genuine reconstruction of the ocuppied Paris back in the early forties and the creative camera inventions the director resorted to during the film actually allow to maintain the supense you would not have expected from such a movie by revealing little by little the diferent feelings Marguerite Duras (the writer) came through (specially her twisted feeling towards her lover and the husband she must wait). Thanks to all this we can comprehend the unexpected turns of the historical events through the eyes of a "resistante" (Marguerite Duras), we live the waiting, the environment, the mood o the people in the ocuppied Paris, the suffering of the people, the watershed of history when the fear suddenly changed sides, the political commitment that some people decided to have and the one that others decided to avoid at all cost, all this is perfectly pictured, illustrated, narrated described and depicted with a true authenticity that never bore us despite the theme of the film. Melanie Thierry once again is just amazing (quite unfair not to give her the Cesar award for that utterringly good performance), we suffer with her, and never abandon her pain (the real title in French means pain). A great adaptation on screen and a very emotional moment . I recommend !