An Affair of Love (1999)

Truly Dreadful Film

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

We make the decision to stop smoking and stop. But deep inside us is still the smoking-desire. We have not stopped. To do this we should enact smoking until we are not disturbed by the suppressed wish. Now we have stopped smoking. Like this it is with many of our more or less conscious/unconscious phantasy's we nearly never can enact. For most of them we need the corresponding Other. "Une liaison pornographic" describes such a nearly-never-situation. The actors are the 17 years older Nathalie Baye and Sergi Lopez (1999). It's an interview after their years-experience. She and he disclose not their name, age, occupation, or where they live – emerging from and disappearing into the peopled blurred crowd, two normal every-day-people of the respectable middle class. After he answered her ad they meet in a Left Bank café before they go to a neighborhood hotel, closing the rooms door Ne 118. We are outside and the off screen interviewer is not told what happened. It is the "Belle de Jour"-box or the "Pulp Fiction"-briefcase – or the forbidden door in the fairytale the hero opens, or Tjernisjevskijs inspiring novel: a common room for togetherness and the two rooms to which the other was forbidden to enter – or the lacanian short hour: after the patient has said the word, he enters without Lacan the room. Of their years relation we witness eight sessions. After the first three we jump to the last; the protected frame-deal is designed by her. The desire itself is focused. As Roger Eberts wrote "It is about having a part of you that has been your precious secret since you can first remember, a part you thought you could never share, and finding someone whose own secret part is a match for your own" (Chicago Sun-Times oct 27 2000) The relation ends as it started: in room Ne 118 without us as witness. Enclosed the six experiences, headed by a keyword: the deal, restaurant dinner, cabylian legend, love, boy, disintegration, rescue attempt, deal-return – the process of a curve. After their second encounter he suggests a restaurant dinner the same evening. Seeing them talking, we hear the interview. During the dinner is the sexual undercurrent of saying one thing and thinking another disturbing; both are free. Leaving the restaurant they again return to the hotel and before she steps later into the taxi, he hears that he is 'nice'. After some months, she suggests to love, we invited to watch the nearly nine film minutes. When they part, she weeps. Until this moment he was an adult, polite behavior and tender attitude. Roger Eberts: "You are not in love with the other person, so much as the two of you share a tenderness because each knows how hard the other has looked, and how hopeless the search seemed at times." But after their public-lovemaking he changes into the boyish stubborn attitude, paired with its latent male brutality. Against the deal, he follows her without her knowledge – or does she? – loosing her in the métrolabyrint. Even she is nervous, sensing that he, against their deal, needs not her but her as 'Mother'. The idea of the restaurant dinner did not belong to their deal. A new deal should have been made as the deal was for them the lacanian Third, forbidding the mother-child-incest. She accepted the dinner, admitting for the interviewer "What was it? One sentence, two? Words he said, those few, started off everything. But I didn't understand that then." A deal helps the male to be the adult, but changes him into a boy when the deal is not taken seriously, not changed when the contents changes. The event with the old man is the result of the deals disintegration. She looses her self by trying to rescue the relation. She suddenly believes that she loves him, telling him that she wants to share their aging life together. Now it is his turn for his tears. Unable to answer, they return to the hotel, having a bath and seeing them after having made love: "For one second", he tells her "you gave me everything." (this moment is the cover picture of the VHS/DVD). Their last time in the café: we hear their thoughts – he translating her body language different. The affair has to end as their years experience is not enough for a every-day-relation. For a last time they return to room Ne 118 to enact what the deal was, closing the circle, sealing the together-year as a memory-jewel. Departing, they briefly kiss goodbye and dissolve into the blurred crowd. It is in todays big-brother-is-watching-you-society easy to find the other – they never did that. Are they now tempted to use the off screen interviewers knowledge, aware of that their fantasy still tempts? As long we live with the wish of smoking, even that we have stopped, we still smoke.

The kind of non committal aspect of the two main characters who respond to each other's profiles is the object of getting together and learning nothing about one another has a promising premise. Of course, we, the audience and mostly the filmmaker hope that, as voyeurs, become participants into what is supposed to surprise. While I like Baye and her face on screen, it is Lopez who exudes most of the charm, even if it is that of a schoolboy. As she sees him for the last time, one is reminded of the strong ending of THE WAY WE WERE where the substance of is more satisfying because of the lovers in that film's having an interrupted past. Sergio can be quite handsome and it is to his credit that he is a good actor to be able to be non sexual given his physical attributes which would make most women find attractive. His tears do not really surprise unless it is because he feels he is an unsatisfying lover. This makes sense primarily because of his excellent wardrobe, stylishness, and obvious successful "other" life.He borders on being a stud except for his height.5'6" may or not be mentioned to get reactions from audiences worldwide who primarily think of leading men as being taller. Because I am 6'3" and find my height along with my good looks as a major plus I have had in past bedroom conquests. I lived in Paris for many years in my 20's and it sure worked there. So, I am left with a feeling of Sergio still like a young boy who does not know if he is loved by anyone including Baye and at "home'. Finally, I think the "interviewer" is a needless device and is written in as a "time filler". My personal feelings of "romance" vary and believe most men to be childlike where it is such a part of a woman's being.

A movie about all of us - what we dream of doing, do for real or envy others who do it. The mere meetings of the couple are the fantasy. It's an everyday matter to experience a blind date, but it's a one-to-a thousand chance that it will be so perfect. Its perfection makes the ending so tragic. I was to a great extent shocked by the anonymity, in which the couple exists. And how can "he" realize that he doesn't know neither her name, nor her telephone numbler, nor ...anything, after so many months of regular closeness?! This movie definitely moved me with the simplicity of the story and the tragedy of human misunderstanding. Again, I was fascinated by the beauty of European films.

Her (Nathalie Baye) places an ad in a magazine looking for a sexual partner to share her fantasy. He (Sergi Lopez) responds. They meet in a bistro on a gray afternoon in Paris and proceed to a nearby hotel. Their coupling is verysatisfactory to them and they proceed to other encounters. All this is told in flashback with both speaking separately, and wistfully about what happenedand how it ended. This is a fascinating story, appealingly told with sureness by director Frederic Foteyne and his attractive, expressive leads. Yes, their affair is casual, sexual and without the usual "meeting cute" baggage. Actually, I thought she was the engine that began and ended the affair. Lopez's character seems to be far more emotionally involved as the affair progress than Baye's. He responds to herresponding to him and you can see him falling for her. Her speech to him about her feelings is quite startling and you think, maybe he's going to seek hercommitment. A happy ending, though this is not one of those silly tearjerkers where you sit there embarrassed, would have been wrong and it's very satisfying. I loved this small, quiet, movie. The sex is very discreet. The dialoge is direct and thank goodness this is not a wordy movie. It doesn't need it. It's got a very good director in control of his material and two fine leads who tell you all you need to know. I just discovered Sergi Lopez was the villain in DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. He's a terrific screen presence. Someone mentioned CHAOS (in connection with their review of this film),another French film I recently discovered. Two more mature, well-written, well- acted and directed films could not be imagined. Highly recommended.