Coup de foudre

Plot synopsis:
Entre Nous tells the story of two young married women in the 1950s who don't recognise how unfulfilled they have been in their marriages until they meet each other. In the preliminary scenes, set in 1942, Lena (Isabelle Huppert), a pretty 18-year-old, has been arrested and brought to an internment camp for Jews in the Pyrenees. The camp is guarded by members of the French Foreign Legion, and one of them, Michel (Guy Marchand), writes her a note warning her she may be deported to a German Nazi camp, and offers her marriage as a means of escape. She accepts. During the marriage ceremony she discovers that he too is Jewish; she's dismayed to learn that she won't have the protection of a gentile name.
But she has no choice and they hasten to the Italian border. By 1952, the hardworking Michel has got himself his own garage in Lyon, and they have two small daughters. Lena meets Madeleine (Miou-Miou), at a school pageant. Madeleine, who comes from a moderately wealthy family, was an art student in 1942, and had married a fellow student who was killed in a street skirmish between the students and the collaborationist police. A widow at 19, Madeleine drifted into marriage with an actor/black marketeer, Costa (Jean-Pierre Bacri), and now has a son at the school. The two women become inseparable, in one scene, sharing a bed (though there is no overt lesbian sexuality between the characters).
They develop an intimacy that is based partly on their boredom with their domestic situations. Michel and Lena's marriage is fractious, although there are moments of happiness with their two young daughters, and the film is primarily about Lena leaving her husband. At the end of the film, she and Madeleine (who left her own husband sometime earlier, had trouble holding down a job, and went through a nervous breakdown), are about to open a dress shop in Paris.

Tags: autobiographical, murder

Review:
Wonderfully Moving and Sad Movie About Style and Incompatibility.
This is a very moving film.
I think I found it more sad than some of the other reviewers.
It's really about the decline of a marriage through the incompatibility of the couple.The incompatibility is brought home to the woman by her class, education, style, grace and education.
(The sophisticated one, played by Miou Miou is just extraordinary acting).
In essence, the sophisticated woman causes the central woman (played by Isabelle Huppert) to realize that her husband is a dolt, and that they share far more than she and her husband.
The wonderful thing about the movie is that though the husband is a boob, insensitive and sometimes prone to violent anger, there is no doubt that he slaves for his family, is very humble, and deeply loves his wife and his two daughters - no question about it.We get to see his pain as his wife falls out of love for him, his sometimes violent jealousy of the woman who has made his wife see him differently, and his heartbreak.
It's quite profound.
Those who say it all ends happily were watching another movie!I loved the periods, the costumes, the settings - from Paris on Liberation Day through the 1940s and 1950s.
Although it's the daughter's story, we see much of how the couple earlier met, married and began their married life.
You will love it - it's more fast-paced than many French movies, and wrenching..
Honest, sad, beautiful and very touching.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)Michel (Guy Marchand) falls in love with Jewish refuge Lena (Isabelle Huppert) at first sight and offers marriage as a way she can avoid being sent to a German concentration camp.
She accepts, and although she doesn't love him, they have two children and are still married when we pick up the action again in Lyons in 1952 when Lena is 29-years-old.
There she meets the sophisticated and well-to-do artist Madeleine (Miou-Miou) who awakens her to the drabness of her existence as a housewife with a loutish husband who now runs a gas station.
The attraction between Lena and Madeleine is very strong, and very threatening to the men, especially to Michel.Huppert's poignant and bittersweet portrayal reminds me of her delicate work in Madame Bovary (1991).
There is the same listlessness expressed along with a vague desire for something better out of life, and the anticipation of the sadness that we know will come of such desire.
Miou-Miou is sharp and cynical with perhaps a streak of the manic-depressive about her.
The love they spontaneously feel for one another is real and beautiful and makes us want it to be fulfilled.
But Lena holds herself back because of her family, and then it is the men and propriety that get in the way.Of course this is very French and Lena and Madeleine hold hands and comfort one another while telling each other their innermost secrets including the infidelities of their spouses, etc.
(The men have no such communication.) Director Diane Kurys exercises more restraint in showing the physical nature of their mutual attraction than would be displayed today.
Lena says to Madeleine at one point, "I want to kiss you," but we do not see them kissing.
The most explicit scene sexually is the startling, but delicately expressed, meeting with the soldiers on the train where we discover the full extent of Lena's frustration.This is not quite a great movie.
The pace is a little slow in spots and sometimes the focus is not as sharp as it could be.
But it is an extraordinarily honest movie, and I'll take that over sharp technique any day.
Huppert is not only at her best here, but her exquisite and subtle beauty is shown to great advantage.
Miou-Miou is also very pretty of course--this is the first time I've seen her--so I would say her strength of character is perhaps her strongest suit.
This is a human tragedy on a small, intimate scale, one that we can't help but feel could have been averted had those involved understood one another better, had they been a little wiser.
We've all been there before and so we can share the sadness and the sense of loss..
Glowing praise.
Diane Kurys made four films out of her childhood and adolescent experience; that's one of the richest mining for memories in cinematic history.
Besides Coup de foudre/Entre nous, there are C'est la vie, Diabolo menthe/Peppermint soda, and Cocktail Molotov (which I have commented on).
Kurys's experience is growing up Jewish in post-war France, where the social values are secular but the traditions of the community she belongs to are not.The story of Lena and Michel may seem bizarre to North Americans--they meet and marry on the same day to escape deportation to the death camps--but it must have seemed quite understandable to the people who had to live through that madness.
That Michel loves Lena passionately while she finds him dull and vulgar is also normal.
These people are making-do with what they've been given, as are Madeleine and Costa, the other unhappy couple.You either love or hate Isabelle Huppert--I must admit to the latter many times over the years, but Miou-Miou is worth whatever the rental or purchase price for this picture is: she's just wonderful; the smallest gesture of her hand carries so much meaning.
One great scene has Costa, the world's worst businessman, bent over the sewing machine trying to add sleeves to shirts with only one sleeve that he's bought on the black market; Madeleine stands in the next room working at a sculpture, simultaneously trying to console Costa and quietly make him realize what a mess their lives have become..
A good movie, taken in context..
I first saw Entre Nous in the mid-to-late 80's.
At the time, the list of "lesbian movies" could be counted on your fingers with several left over.
The majority of those had one party returning to men while the 'die hard dyke' was left with a broken heart.
Even "Desert Hearts", one of the more positive movies out in the 80's had one character leaving the other kind of up in the air.
The fact that this was a true story, written by one of the character's daughters, who was obviously not forever scarred by her mother choosing a woman over her father made it even more positive.
The history is clear for those who know anything about France during WWII.
It's not an action-packed movie, it's not supposed to be.
The characters are not perfect, they're real people.
I wouldn't call it the greatest movie of all time but I own it and I feel that it's worth watching.
Besides, Miou Miou is HOT.
*grin*.
Friendship wins out and develops into more..
This is a wonderful film, the story of two women whose lives gradually become entwined that each can fully bloom.
The story of their meeting their husbands, becoming disillusioned with them and then discovering each other is a lovely story.
There are problems with the sub-titles in the DVD, so if you were to rely wholly on what you read, the film would not work as well.
Overall I enjoyed this film very much.
A lovely story of discovery and awakening, with much left to the viewer's imagination, but all the details add to the whole..
A bittersweet portrayal from a daughter's point of view.
The sweetest thing about this film is the portrayal from a daughter's view of her parents' struggles with who they are and their relationships with each other.
The ending dedication of the film is quite poignant.
This film is a reminder of the ways our lives are thrown together and how that intertwines with the choices we make.
This is a bittersweet love story on more than one dimension..
this movie probably WON'T appeal to most men.
The movie concerns two women who survive WWII and form a friendship in post-war France.
However, as the film unfolds, it seems that the underlying message is "men stink".
While I would agree that there are a lot of lousy spouses, the movie just seemed way too "black and white" in presenting the women as victims.
These husbands either squander their money on selfish pipe dreams or slap their wives silly and make passes at other women.
The women put up with this abuse for a while, but find relief through affairs (such as a quickie on a train with a stranger) and ultimately divorce.
This should really appeal to women who have lived through these types of marriages, but I can't help but want to shout "DON'T BLAME ME--I'M A GOOD GUY!!!"..
One of my favorites.
I wasn't sure where this movie was going at first, but as it picks up the pace there is little doubt as to whom the nous in the title refers.When Huppert says "Je tu manque" (pardon my French it is I hope close) "I miss you" she might as well be declaring the love that is boiling out of her.
But there is the problem of the spouses to be resolved, and the children.
Needless to say all is reconciled and true love triumphs.I have seen this movie at least three times now and love it more each time.
There is a tenderness between most of the characters (one is a lout pure and simple) but the others all strive to reconcile who they are to to events that enfold them.
Their struggles hit all of the right notes (with the possible exception of a very steamy sex scene on a train which just doesn't work for me)It is a tear jerker at times, but a beautiful tear jerker.
and so I always did like those forties movies..
This is supposed to be a "modern classic?".
For years, I've heard glowing praise of this movie....now that I've seen it, I feel the praise is largely undeserved.
The movie gets off to a bad start: It's unclear (at least from the subtitled version I saw) where the heck the characters are.
It's obviously Europe and some kind of World War II era camp, but that's all I could glean....And in the early scenes with Miou Miou, where her first husband gets shot, it wasn't clear who was doing the shooting and/or why.
According to the description on this site, it was the "resistance," whatever that means....(to be fair: perhaps most Europeans in 1983 understood the history without needing reference books, but this U.S. home video viewer in 2002 would have appreciated a bit more historical context)As for the rest of the film....Slow, slow, slow.
And with a lot of extraneous elements that never seemed to go anywhere.
Frankly, I was hoping for more romance between the two women, which you never really see.
You just get Isabelle Huppert's husband being angry all the time.
And for the record, I didn't like the way the Miou-Miou character kept insulting her young son.
None of these characters were particularly likeable, not even Isabelle Huppert.
The ugliness of the characters detracted from my enjoyment of this, too.I suppose this was considered really "avant garde" or something, in terms of subject matter, back in 1983, when it was released.
But today it just falls really flat.
A disappointment..
Subtitles.
Subtitles are unevenly paced, often uncoupled with dialogue, in the version I saw.
I had to rewind frequently and sometimes use the pause button to catch everything..
I've been looking for thsi movie on DVD forever; found one today.
Re KS-8's review above, everyone is of course entitled to his or her opinion.
I disagree though; this really is a modern classic.
I should explain the meaning of "the Resistance" since this is kind of relevant to the plot in this movie.
During WWII, there were a number of people in those countries that had been overrun by the Germans who, fairly understandably, were not too happy about that situation.
The French Resistance was particularly active in trying to do as much damage as possible to the German army.
That's all historical context for what follows in this movie.
It is a great movie and one which I am glad finally to have found on DVD just today (my birthday)..
They Were 'Sisters'.
This is a fine movie any way you look at it in fact I'll amend that to Fine/Great and I'd love to own it on DVD so that I could run it just before La Baule-les-pins (which I do own) and which covers the same autobiographical data from another angle.
For the record both films are based on the early life of writer-director Diane Kurys and both concern the unhappy marriage of her parents - a character based on herself appears in both movies.
Coup de foudre begins before she was born with the meeting of her parents in a 'camp' in Occupied France during World War II.
A guy whose release is already guaranteed spots Isabelle Huppert, falls in love on the spot (hense the title) and smuggles her a note proposing marriage.
Somewhat bemused she agrees only to become angry because his name reeks of Jewishness.
Somewhat improbably they remain together, have two daughters and settle in Lyon.
Simultaneously we are introduced to the second leading character (Miou-Miou), an artist whose husband is shot by the Germans and dies in her arms.
She too 'settles' for something less than love and marries an actor (Jean-Pierre Bacri) whose life is a succession of get-rich-quick schemes that backfire.
The two women meet by chance in 1952 and form a friendship that soon eclipses anything they feel for their respective partners whilst stopping short of overt lesbianism.
Huppert and Miou-Miou have their parts down cold and it's fascinating to see Bacri with a full head of hair looking remarkably like Louis Jordan.
This is a wonderful film on our old friend the Human Condition illustrating just how easy it is to screw up our lives.
The pertinent questions - like why did Huppert stay with someone she didn't love once she was clear of the Camp, let alone after the war, don't raise their quizzical heads til long afterwards such is the strength of both movie and performances.
In La Baule-les-pins the Huppert character, Lena (now played by Nathalie Baye) is still with her husband but clearly only for a matter of time and the two girls are still in the thick of the misery.
Both are highly recommended..
A classic.
The first time I saw this film I thought it was a rip off of Jules and Jim which is one of the greatest movies of all time.
Subsequent viewings have allowed me to appreciate this film in its own right.
Entre Nous is a wonderful movie with two of the greatest actresses ever in Miou Miou and Isabelle Huppert.
While a prior poster believes men cannot appreciate this film I disagree.
As a man who has seen this repeatedly I believe it is a great great film about female friendship and the difficulties(perhaps inherent) in relationships.
I don't know if that justifies a spoiler but just to be on the safe side I am checking the spoiler box.