A demanding director ,whose "un soir ,un train " should be considered an all-time classic, André Delvaux was a very educated person with a bizarre fondness for popular culture (Jean Ray's Harry Dickson and Louis Feuillade's Fantomas), some kind of Belgian Alain Resnais .
His works are not very accessible ,but there is a recurrent feature : the frontiers between dream and reality are blurred , chronology is flouted ."Belle " belongs to this strain ,the technique of which now running well ; like Mathias -in "Belle " it's Matthieu ,note the analogy- in "un soir ,un train" (Yves Montand) is a scholar who meets a girl he cannot communicate with verbally ;in the 1968 masterpiece ,it was a strange village where this linguistics professor was not able to understand a single word.
His life may be a prestigious one, but his lectures seem to meet mixed interest ,and it's certain that his relation with his wife (Danielle Delorme) has nothing to do with Louise Labé 's erotic poems from the sixteenth century ; thus,it's only natural he begins an affair with a long-haired girl ...or an attempt to mythologize his dull life through the creation of a fantasy world of romantic dreams : because Belle may be a fantasy , like "Elle" (Anna Karina) in "rendez-vous à Bray "(1971);both women are mysterious , they live in landscapes which recall paintings (nobody films the trees like Delvaux).It must be said that shots of Mathias in his bed ,often sleepless , follow the scenes with Belle.
Delvaux 's fascination for the trains ,present in both precedent work, resurfaces in the nighmare scene ;the cold colors -dominant dark blue- of the streets and of the station platform sharply contrast with the warm gold of the fields where the dream girl runs.
