Une Liason pornographique
Belgium/France/Luxembourg/Switzerland 1999
Reviewed by Ginette Vincendeau
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Paris, the present. A fortysomething woman and a younger man recount how they met through lonely-heart ads to fulfil a mutual sexual fantasy, the nature of which remains a mystery throughout. They remain nameless to us. The film intercuts their separate interviews with flashbacks to the affair.
They meet regularly in the same café and move on to the same hotel room. Determined to keep their liaison purely sexual, they forbid any discussion of the rest of their lives. Initially the camera stays outside the hotel room. When they decide to make love "normally" (as they put it), their affair takes a more intimate turn and we witness their love-making.
At one point he tries to follow her in the metro, breaking one of the rules they've drawn up to regulate the relationship. He loses track of her. When they meet again in the hotel, an old man tries to come into their room by mistake and subsequently collapses. They visit him in hospital and meet his wife. Later the main protagnoist tells her lover she's in love with him. Although he subsequently finds he is in love with her too, they decide to split up. She glimpses him once later in the street but decides not to make contact.
Review
Despite its provocative title, Une liaison pornographique is less a work of pornography than the latest addition to French art cinema's tradition of intimate realism. Aspiring to depict the lives of two ordinary Parisians, the film's observational tone is perhaps better evoked by the English subtitle An Intimate Affair. However, from the opening credits over a background of people milling around the streets of Paris to the nameless central characters, director Frédéric Fonteyne sets himself the challenge of representing not just ordinariness but anonymity. Just as the two central characters deliberately remain ciphers for one another - they embark on an affair to fulfil a mutual sexual fantasy - so the film creates a wholly generic sense of place (apart from a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower), hopping between bland, functional locations such as the café and hotel in which the lovers meet. Rather than serving up a richly detailed slice of life, Une liaison pornographique keeps its focus relentlessly on the central couple, isolating them from their lived-in environment. The result denies spectators the chief pleasure of the intimate-realist genre, which consists in lovingly textured and sharply funny depictions of the everyday as in the early films of Claude Sautet (Les Choses de la vie, 1969) or more recently Cédric Klapisch (Un air de famille).
Fonteyne's decision not to show a large chunk of the sexual affair - notably the erotic fantasy the couple live out in their hotel room - is both his film's strength and its downfall. For interesting as the idea of leaving this fantasy unknown and unseen is, it makes it even harder to sustain an interest in the characters or their fate. In Last Tango in Paris (1972) - Fonteyne's evident cinematic model - the scenes of anonymous sex between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider were supplemented by an examination of their lives outside their erotic encounters, by Brando's star persona (anything but anonymous) and by an elegiac visual style. The restrained camerawork and colour scheme of Une liaison pornograhique find an echo in the subdued eroticism of the few scenes which finally do take place inside the hotel room, featuring profile shots of Nathalie Baye's ecstatic face, overhead views of the couple in bed with bodies discreetly covered and muted music.
Une liaison pornographique rests on the performances of its two leads. Sergi López has a similar role to the Latin lover he played in La Nouvelle Eve. His Spanishness is toned down, but as in La Nouvelle Eve it is intrinsic to his acceptability as male object of desire for a more mature woman. Meanwhile the female lead role is cut to the measure of Nathalie Baye's genteel good looks and independent-yet-vulnerable star persona. Her age and status give her the edge over López, just as in the film her character determines the course of the affair at key points. At the same time she is the one who exposes herself emotionally by declaring her love first. She is also seen to be lost and crying for no particular reason in the street. The tears are a recurrent Baye moment; by comparison the male character cries - briefly - in response to her declaration of love. His crying is an act; hers a state of being.
In a more upbeat mood, Baye here reprises her roles in Tonie Marshall's Vénus Beauté (Institut) and Jeanne Labrune's Si je t'aime, prends garde à toi where she also played a mature woman ostensibly in search of purely sexual pleasure. Like these recent films, Une liaison pornagraphique makes the idea that sexual equality for women is incompatible with an emotional relationship the subject of its narrative. Tellingly, the film's only digression from charting the couple's liaisons concerns the collapse of an old man in the hotel. Just before being taken to hospital he tells the couple that he has always hated his wife; but when the couple meet his wife, she tells them of her intense love for him (she commits suicide after he dies). Throughout, the film systematically expresses the two main characters' incompatibility through the slightly different accounts each gives of the relationship. But while it insists on the impossibility of sustained relationships and even romance, Une liaison pornographique also fails to convey sexual chemistry or excitement. In this light, denying us a visual representation of the fantasy is less a clever tease than an admission of failure.
Credits
- Director
- Frédéric Fonteyne
- Producer
- Patrick Quinet
- Screenplay
- Philippe Blasband
- Director of Photography
- Virginie Saint Martin
- Editor
- Chantal Hymans
- Art Directors
- Véronique Sacrez
- Marc-Philippe Guerig
- Music
- Jeannot Sanavia
- André Dziezuk
- Marc Mergen
- ©Artémis Productions/Les Productions Lazennec/ARP Séléction/Samsa
- Film/Fama Film/RTBF/SRG SF DRS
- Production Companies
- Artémis Productions presents in co-production with
- Les Productions Lazennec, A.R.P. Séléction, Samsa Film, Fama Film, RTBF
- (Télévision belge), SRG/SF DRS (Télévision suisse)
- With the participation of Canal+ and the participation of
- Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Communauté Française de Belgique,
- Teledistributeurs Wallons and Fonds National de Soutien à la Production
- Audiovisuelle Grande-Duche de Luxembourg
- With the support of Eurimages
- Commissioning Editor
- SF/DRS:
- Martin Schmassmann
- Associate Producers
- Production Lazennec:
- Alain Rocca
- ARP Séléctions:
- Michèle Pétin
- Laurent Pétin
- Samsa Film:
- Claude Waringo
- Fama Film:
- Rolf Schmid
- RTBF:
- Arlette Zylberberg
- Production Manager
- Olivier Rausin
- Unit Production Managers
- France:
- Patrick Pesenti
- Luxembourg:
- Marc Dalmans
- Claude Ludovicy
- French Unit Manager
- Jean-Pascal Gautier
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- Cathy Deharynck
- Switzerland:
- Gisela Hochuli
- Irène Rupp
- 2nd Unit Director
- David Putorti
- Assistant Directors
- Manu Kamanda
- Christine Rabette
- Script Supervisor
- Josiane Morand
- Casting
- France:
- Bruno Levy
- Belgium:
- Gerda Diddens
- 2nd Unit Camera
- Sébastien Köeppel
- Camera Operator
- Rémon Fromont
- Steadicam Operator
- Patrick de Ranter
- Set Decorators
- Luxembourg:
- Thierry Van Cappelen
- France:
- Marie-Pierre Bourboulon
- Costume Designer
- Anne Schotte
- Make-up
- Françoise Andrejka
- Hairdresser
- Cedric Chami
- Titles/Opticals
- Excalibur
- Music Consultant
- Emmanuel Gaspart
- Soundtrack
- "Lloyd's Register" - The Rachels
- Sound
- Carlo Thoss
- Henri Morelle
- Recorders
- David Gillain
- Luc Thomas
- Gréggory Poncelet
- Mixers
- Franco Piscopo
- Etienne Curchod
- Post-sync/Sound Effects Mixer
- Benoît Biral
- Sound Editors
- Etienne Curchod
- Nathalie Delvoye
- Sound Effects
- Philippe van Leer
- Post-synchronisation
- Jo Masset
- Cast
- Nathalie Baye
- her
- Sergi López
- him
- Jacques Viala
- interviewer
- Paul Pavel
- Monsieur Lignaux
- Sylvie van den Elsen
- Madame Lignaux
- Pierre Geranio
- hotel receptionist
- Hervé Sogne
- ambulance driver
- Christophe Sermet
- hospital employee
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Alliance Releasing (UK)
- 7,363 feet
- 81 minutes 49 seconds
- In Colour
- Subtitles
- Anamorphic
- Alternative title
- An Intimate Affair