A Woman’s Life – first look review

Stéphane Brizé has craft­ed an immac­u­late adap­ta­tion of Guy de Maupassant’s debut nov­el that thor­ough­ly suc­ceeds in bring­ing the French author’s real­ism to the big screen in suf­fo­cat­ing Acad­e­my ratio (1.37:1). A study of ideals and iso­la­tion begin­ning in 1819, Nor­mandy and extend­ing over a life­time leads the view­er deep down into the pits of despair along with its naïve pro­tag­o­nist Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds (Judith Chemla).

Brizé employs a non-lin­ear for­mat switch­ing between dif­fer­ent time peri­ods in Jeanne’s life, with close-ups of her pen­sive, smil­ing and bit­ter face fill­ing the frame. We first meet her pluck­ing crops in the sun­shine with her father on one of their farms as bird­song fills the air. She’s young, care­free and has just returned home from a con­vent school where she was restrict­ed from see­ing her sweet and car­ing par­ents (played by Jean-Pierre Dar­roussin and Yolande More­au) so val­ued was her education.

But it’s not long before we see Jeanne wrapped up against the howl­ing wind and rain, trudg­ing through the mud and weep­ing in anguish. The ques­tion of how she got to such a mis­er­able place is answered via tor­tu­ous­ly sad encoun­ters and inter­mit­tent snip­pets of glo­ri­ous hap­pi­ness that are snatched away before the view­er can get too com­fort­able. With the focus on how unfair life is to Jeanne and how it wears her down how­ev­er this makes for a gru­elling watch.

Jeanne’s life is dic­tat­ed by a patri­ar­chal sys­tem and after mar­ry­ing Julien de Lamare (Swann Arlaud) it is up to him to ensure their busi­ness and social lives are in order. The thing is he turns out to be a phi­lan­der­ing scoundrel who is only inter­est­ed in keep­ing up appear­ances and mak­ing mon­ey. Jeanne search­es for coun­sel with the local parish­ioners who all advise her that for­give­ness is the best route and even blame her for being com­plic­it in her husband’s deceit­ful ways. She gives birth to a self­ish, whiney, enti­tled son who through­out his life­time runs up huge debts and end­less­ly bor­rows mon­ey from his moth­er. Jeanne spends her entire life try­ing to please men who don’t care about her and friends who betray her.

There’s no fault­ing any of the play­ers in this exquis­ite­ly craft­ed peri­od piece. Lead actress Chem­la is mes­meris­ing whether she’s joy­ful­ly cradling a new born baby, sway­ing on a cliff over­look­ing a sun dap­pled ocean or seething by a crack­ling open fire as her hus­band lauds his pow­er over her. Arlaud ensures Julien is a nefar­i­ous pres­ence while Dar­roussin pro­vides warm­ing com­fort as Jeanne’s father.

Brizé makes much of Jeanne’s rela­tion­ship with nature and her moods as they change with the sea­sons. His ded­i­ca­tion to express­ing the way in which Jeanne’s soul is rav­aged via sav­age back­drops is impres­sive. A star­tling scene which places the hand­held cam­era over still porce­lain white, blood splat­tered corpses is eeri­ly effec­tive and haunting.

The pain and suf­fer­ing of Jeanne brings to mind Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark – anoth­er por­tray­al of a woman whose life is gov­erned by cru­el cir­cum­stance. Unlike Von Tri­er, how­ev­er, Brizé allows a ray of hope to pierce through the gloom. A Woman’s Life boasts its own pun­ish­ing inten­si­ty, but the fact that Brizé ends with a one-line plat­i­tude that serves no oth­er pur­pose than to state the obvi­ous is groan-inducing.