L'Ennui
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The present. Recently separated from his wife, Parisian philosophy lecturer Martin finds himself ever more alienated from the niceties of his upper-middle-class life. Driving through a red-light district, he witnesses an altercation between 17-year-old Cécilia and the much older Meyers. He follows the latter into a sex bar and saves Meyers from a nasty beating. Meyers rewards him with one of his paintings, but on visiting his studio a few days later, Martin learns the painter has recently expired while making love with his model - Cécilia, with whom Meyers had been involved in a highly-charged affair. Martin now begins to meet her for regular sex.
Riddled with self-doubt and tortured by unremitting self-analysis, Martin is intrigued, infuriated and finally driven round the bend by Cécilia's inscrutable ability to live only in the present. When he learns she is two-timing him with an actor her own age (Momo), jealousy gives way to increasingly deranged behaviour. Cécilia abandons her dying father, leaves Martin behind, and goes on holiday with Momo. Martin picks up a prostitute in his car and promptly crashes into a tree. Martin recovers in hospital from his injuries, hopeful about the possibility of now taking his life forward again.
Review
In its stark scrutiny of sex and sexuality, Cédric Kahn's compelling transposition of Alberto Moravia's 1960 novel La noia (Boredom) to a highly stylised contemporary Paris is an extension of his critically acclaimed Bar des rails and Trop de bonheur. Stylistically, however, where the quasi-documentary social realism of these earlier features situates them under the 'young French cinema' umbrella, L'Ennui has higher production values and constitutes an assured fresh departure. The film carries visual and thematic echoes of Last Tango in Paris (1972), First Name Carmen, and some of the work of Catherine Breillat. The key initial encounter between Cécilia and Martin, for instance, is reminiscent of the sexual stand-off played out between the 14-year-old Lili and Maurice in the seaside hotel room in Breillat's 36 Fillette - a film on which Kahn worked as assistant editor.
Sex in L'Ennui is presented in a resolutely detached manner. Titillation or the threat of slippage into the pornographic is subverted through the strong grounding of the sex scenes in the narrative, the eruption of humour (a deadpan quip, or the rhythmic thumping of a bed on a wooden floor), or simply sheer horror at the sexual violence. Kahn's methodical dissection of the formation and disintegration of an intense relationship between two pretty unappealing human beings is almost scientific in its precision: just as the movement and interaction of inanimate particles might be magnified through the lens of a microscope, so Kahn charts the fallout from the chance collision of two bodies finding themselves locked into the same deadly orbit. The sequences in which Cécilia and Martin have sex are no more or less significant within the overall canvas of the film than any of the other scenes that take place outside, inside, or in cars, and where we are just as alert to the emotional investment at stake in the spatial proximity or distance between their bodies.
The Meyers character - hauntingly embodied by the late Robert Kramer - looms large. Martin is increasingly plagued by the possibility that his passion for Cécilia may be no more than a hollow rerun of that previously shared between Cécilia and Meyers. But Meyers also represents painting, and his presence signals Kahn's careful attention to composition and colour. The rapprochement of opposites within the narrative - of Cécilia's inscrutable calm and emotionless voice and Martin's edgy gestures and clipped, nervy tones - is powerfully underscored by a mise en scène in which fluid camera movements are constantly threatened by the unannounced cut. Similarly, Martin's frenetic hyperactivity is portrayed not only through distorting lenses, but in startling leaps in rhythm and pace. As his intermittent bouts of enraged obsession give way to near-madness, we find ourselves ensnared in an increasingly hallucinatory narrative. Beautifully crafted and superbly acted, this often darkly funny and disturbing film deserves a wide audience.
Credits
- Director
- Cédric Kahn
- Producer
- Paulo Branco
- Screenplay
- Cédric Kahn
- Laurence Ferreira Barbosa
- Based on the novel La noia by
- Alberto Moravia
- Director of Photography
- Pascal Marti
- Editor
- Yann Dedet
- Art Director
- François Abelanet
- ©Gemini Films
- Production Companies
- Paulo Branco presents a Gemini Films/Ima Films co-production with the participation of Canal+/Centre National de la Cinématographie
- Associate Producer
- Madragoa Filmes
- Production Managers
- Philippe Saal
- Antoine Beau
- Unit Production Managers
- Jean-Dominique Chouchan
- Hacéne Belkhedra
- Mohand Hadjlarbi
- Unit Manager
- Mathieu Lévy
- Pre-production/Post-production
- Elisabeth Bocquet
- Assistant Directors
- Valérie Megard
- Thomas Allandari
- Script Supervisor
- Christine Brottes
- Casting
- Sarah Teper
- Antoinette Boulat
- Antoine Carrard
- Anne Marepiano
- Set Decorator
- Sabine Delouvrier
- Paintings
- Gérald Garand
- Titles/Opticals
- Arane
- Costumes
- Françoise Clavel
- Wardrobe
- Janina Ryba
- Key Make-up
- Corinne Maillard
- Key Hairdressers
- Josée Berry
- Studio J.
- Christine Chomicki
- Soundtrack
- "Melao de Cana" by Hippolita Pedroso, performed by Celia Cruz with La Sonora Matancera; "Mi bajo" by Miguel Roman, performed by Conjuto Casino; "La prieta Linda" by Memo Zalamanca, performed by Orchestre Hermanos Castro; "Maracaïbo" by Noro Morales, Pickering, Rodriguez, performed by Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra; "Miner's Son (Aquatic Mix)" by/performed by Beth Hirsch; "Lovely to Look At" by Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, Jerome Kern, performed by The Laura Fontaine Trio; "Bombay by Night" by S. Yasotha; "Siegfried Idyl" by Richard Wagner, performed by Liszt Chamber Orchestra, directed by Ernest Lukacs
- Sound Engineer
- Jean-Paul Mugel
- Studio Recording
- Fabien Adelin
- Mixer
- Dominique Hennequin
- Post-synch
- Michel Filippi
- Key Sound Editor
- Pascal Villard
- Sound Effects
- Nicolas Becker
- Cast
- Charles Berling
- Martin
- Sophie Guillemin
- Cécilia
- Arielle Dombasle
- Sophie
- Robert Kramer
- Leopold Meyers
- Alice Grey
- Cécilia's mother
- Maurice Antoni
- Cécilia's father
- Tom Ouedraogo
- Maurice 'Momo' Mayard
- Patrick Arrachequesne
- doctor
- Mirtha Caputi Medeiros
- Meyers' concierge
- Pierre Chevalier
- university dean
- Oury Milshtein
- Jean-Paul
- Anne-Sophie Morillon
- Agnès
- Marc Chouppart
- Ferdinand
- Cécile Reigher
- Ferdinand's girlfriend
- Antoine Beau
- Pierre
- Serge Bozon
- philosophy student
- Nicole Pescheux
- owner of disreputable bar
- M'mah Maribe
- girl in disreputable bar
- Seljko Zivanovic
- bouncer
- Nathalie Besançon
- nurse
- Gérard Arbeix
- owner of Momo's café
- Karim Grandi
- Philippe Rebbot
- waiters at Momo's café
- Rosalie Coly
- woman in telephone booth
- Estelle Perron
- voice of a prostitute
- Karima Seddougui
- Olga Zekova
- Catherine Labbe
- Aline Blondeau
- Monique Le Mestre
- Danielle Moro
- Michelle Perrin
- Sonia Mekoues
- Alice Argentini
- Marina de Luca
- Catherine Chevalier
- Catherine Contou
- Bebita Bidounga
- prostitutes
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- 10,989 feet
- 122 minutes 6 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Subtitles