La belle personne

Plot synopsis:
After the death of her mother, Junie (Léa Seydoux) transfers to the school that her cousin Mathias (Esteban Carjaval-Alegria) attends. She catches the attention of a lot of people, especially Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and Nemours (Louis Garrel), her Italian teacher. In Italian class, a record of Maria Callas singing Lucia plays, which causes Junie to rush out crying, leaving her affairs behind. Nemours sees a photo of her taken by another student and swipes it. After this, Nemours pursues her even though she has mixed feelings about it. He is so enamored by her that he breaks off his relationships with Florence Perrin, a teacher (Valerie Lang), and Marie, a student (Agathe Bonitzer). Nemours switches seats with Mathias during a field trip. Marie sees a letter left on the seat and it spreads throughout the student body. This letter is a love letter that all of the students think was written by Nemours. Junie, upon reading the letter, becomes very upset, believing that Nemours is in love with somebody else. Mathias goes to Nemours and explains that it was his letter from another boy named Martin and asked him to say that it belonged to the teacher. One of Otto's friends from the Russian language class is asked to spy on her after Junie acts cold to Otto and sees Nemours acting tender to Junie. He mistakes it for kissing and Otto confronts Junie about the misunderstanding. She denies it and goes home. Otto kills himself the next day by jumping from a very high floor at school. After Otto's suicide, Junie skips school for three weeks coming only after Nemours tells Mathias that he will be taking sick leave until the end of the semester. Nemours follows Junie around and she decides to approach him. He asks for some time to talk to her and they are seen running around the city like children. He takes her back to his room where she starts talking about love. He takes her home where they set a date for 5pm the day after next. Nemours waits till seven, then calls Mathias. Mathias comes down and tells Nemours that Junie left yesterday, and he is not allowed to say where and to forget about her. She also said she never wanted to see him again. Junie is seen on a ship departing for somewhere else.

Tags: tragedy, romantic

Review:
This is a lovely, deliberate, melancholy look into the fairy-tale lives of pale, beautiful, preternaturally graceful high-school students in Paris - a dreamy, pearly, wintry Paris on which the harsh sun never, ever shines.The Beautiful Person is so hypnotically beautiful that it drew me through the somewhat jarring adjustment I had to make from my placid late-middle-aged American world into theirs, which teems with sex and longing, but - Oh, my!
Those reviews also hinted that I might be slightly disappointed after Christophe Honoré's last movie, the remarkable Love Songs (Les Chansons d'amour).
This is a sadder movie, but it is no less deeply satisfying.Like Love Songs, seeing this once is not enough: I need my own copy so I can watch it over and over.
Also like Love Songs, I expect the pleasure it gives will grow richer with each viewing.Something nice I just realized: there are no drugs in this movie, hardly any alcohol (none at all among the kids), no vomiting, no farting, no bullying, no mindless cruelty or grossness of any kind.
After her mother's death, a pretty teenage girl (Lea Seydoux) moves in with relatives and attends school with her male cousin.
"Junie", the protagonist, first gets involved with "Otto", the shy odd-man-out in all these sexual shenanigans (perhaps because he's the only one with a decent haircut), but she soon finds herself drawn to the young Italian teacher (Louis Garrel), who is already involved with another student in the clique AND a fellow teacher.This kind of sounds like a French bedroom farce--especially a scene where one character drops a lurid love letter from his pocket and everyone thinks it belongs to the Italian teacher, leading to all kinds of misunderstandings.
In that respect this kind of reminded me of Catherine Breillat film, but it also has a surprising lack of sex scenes (aside from one strange scene where Seydoux bares her breasts for her boyfriend in what looks to be a school hallway or the streets of Paris).
It's a modern-day film judging from the occasional use of cell phones, but the characters still pass notes instead of text messaging.
I guess France is just a different place--at least their movies certainly are.Seydoux is pretty good here even if her character is frustratingly opaque.
She and Anais Demoustier (who has a small part in this and would appear with Seydoux again later in a similar film called "Le Belle Epine") might be the only girls prettier than their male co-star Louis Garrel, who has appeared in seemingly every other French film since making his mark in Catherine Breillat's 2007 film "The Last Mistress".
This is kind of strange movie for a lot of reasons, but it's also actually pretty good..
Christopher Honoré's La belle personne is a compelling curiosity; transposing the courtly world of Madame de La Fayette's classic 17th century story, La Princess de Cleves to a modern-day French lyceé (with its own courtyard), the film is a compelling observation of "courtly" love in a postmodern world; although it would be convincing to argue La belle personne is not very modern in its presentation of present-day bourgeoise Parisian etudiants.
The title alludes to 17-year-old Junie (Léa Seydoux), whose aura and presence recalls a ghostly incarnation of Godard's muse Anna Karina (Perhaps a self-conscious homage to Godard by the FEMIS-teaching Honoré?).
Following the death of her mother, Junie refuses to live with her father (for unknown reasons), choosing instead to live with her cousin, Mathias, in a haute-bourgeoisie Parisian arrondisement close to the school she and Mathias attend.
' Soon enough Junie becomes the default objet d'amour for the male etudiants, namely love-sick Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) at first.
However, she soon troubles the cad-in-school Italian teacher, Nemours (the lanky yet ever-foppish Louis Garrel) with her otherworldly presence, prompting him to quickly end two amorous entanglements with a middle-aged fellow teacher and a stubborn 16-year-old female student.
With the ensemble of regulars (Garrel, Hesme, Mastroianni, Leprine-Ringuet etc), traversing both films, La belle personne perversely feels like a sequel somehow taking place in a parallel world to Chansons.
As a modern-day exploration of courtly love, La belle personne, is worth seeing numerous times to catch the many subtleties it withholds on first viewing..
I honestly thought I was watching a film from the 60s until I looked it up on IMDb. Everything rung of the 60s from the washed-out color palette (lots of white, grey and cold bluish tints) to the inexplicably brooding, emotionally muted female protagonist who falls into a love tangle (as in Buñuel's "Belle du Jour" (1967) or Vadim's "Le repos du guerrier" (1962)) to the very 60s French soundtrack (Nick Drake, Alain Barrière, Callas) to the big hairstyles on men.
Coming from a relatively puritanical culture, it didn't sit well with me that the film was about a 30-something high school teacher trying to seduce a 16-year old student.
The question posed is: can 1 true love exist, free of all the scandalous infidelities & betrayals, or is human nature such that impetuous desires and unchecked emotions always cause sexual & emotional chaos?You may find yourself needing to watch this film a 2nd time or, as I had to do, rewinding certain scenes to figure out exactly who is who, especially if you're watching the English subtitles.
Instead, like the web of love & deceit itself, the plot is intended to be challenging if not confusing.In the 2nd half, the story distills down to the main 3 characters, and the final 30 mins pack a whollop.
Having seen this at the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival, I will admit to not having an appreciation of Christophe Honore's other work, have not read the book, nor did I recognize any of the actors.
This film is a hidden gem for the lovers of various French traditions: epistolary literature of 17th and 18th century, the breeze of French philosophy of love, friendship and education,, view at old traditional environment of Parisian schools mixed with contemporary teaching styles, love intrigues and tragic resolutions, etc.
That is the substance of French literature, art, philosophy, and its always over and over joy to observe it, in cinematic works like this.
Especially with two eye-candies such as Lea Seydoux and Luis Garrel, who at the same time, happen to be good actors.
Her character may be unfathomable as the rest, but at least it's understandable why everyone keeps on falling in love with her.
She's also a rather amazing actor; hard to tell it here but her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Color was terrific, and not because we get to see her naked a lot.One other thing that bothered me about this film was that almost all the actors were so good-looking.
for he is just too beautiful, and although he proclaims he loves her, in the end she knows he will ultimately leave her for another..
at times he looks and acts more like a student than they do)..
For a TV film, Christophe Honoré's 'La Belle personne' is elegant and allusive.
It's a rethinking of Madame de Lafayette's' 17th-century classic 'La Princesse de Clèves' for Paris lycée classroom and courtyard--which may make you think of the way de Laclos' 'Dangerous Liaisons' was adapted to an American high school in Roger Kumble's 1999 'Cruel Intentions.' Honoré makes use of the fact that the good looks of youth confer a kind of nobility, high school cliques resemble court life, and teenage machinations aren't far from royal plots.
The director features Louis Garrel, himself clearly a "beautiful person," for a fourth time.
The way he slips in appearances by Clotilde Hesme and Chiara Mastroianni and a tragic main role for Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, all from the director's musical film 'Love Songs,' with one song included, makes you feel like the director is playing off his own company of players.
As the self-centered seducer Nemours, Garrel, himself part of a French cinematic dynasty (his father and grandfather are both film icons), gets movie royalty for his love interest.
Léa Seydoux, who plays the central female, lycée newcomer Junie, is a direct descendant of scions of the two great houses of French cinema, Gaumont and Pathé.
There's some titillation (but not much sex), long kisses, and a chance to look up close at beautiful boy and girl faces.
But while the director's 'Dans Paris' lurched back and forth between hilarity (embodied in Louis Garrel) and deep melancholy (hovering over Romain Duris) and in 'Love Songs' a sudden death clouded everyone else's life, this time the teenage passions, ostensibly mortal, feel more superficial, and Nemours, who is involved with a woman teacher and a girl student at the film's start, barely shows a flicker of concern about his multiple affairs and broken hearts apart from the worry that they might get too messy.
So the film may be a pleasure to look at; it may even provide the vicarious pleasure of imagining life at a snooty Paris high school; but the sweetness and sublime gloom of 'Love Songs' and 'Dans Paris' are now more fleeting and peripheral, replaced by machinations it's somewhat difficult to keep track of.When Junie arrives at mid-term, her life disrupted due to the death of her mother, all eyes turn toward her sultry pout.
This school lacks the ghetto intensity shown in Cantet's 'The Class' or the elite-school rigor of Verheyde's 'Stella.' Nemours purveys Italian by setting up a field trip to Italy (which falls through), having pop song lyrics read and translated, and allowing a student to play a record of Callas singing Lucia, causing him and Junie to fall for each other when Junie weeps and rushes out, leaving behind her photo-portrait for Nemours to grab and stash away.Then comes the misplaced love-note, which gets very complicated, and leads to a revelation at a Métro stop about boys loving boys.
And Honoré's relatively weak grasp on what happens in the classroom can't detract from his ability to convey with some vitality the snippy-chic atmosphere in the hallways, and the quick devastation of a teen romance gone wrong (the original 'Princesse de Clèves,' by the way, was fifteen).Thanks largely Alex Beaupain's songs, Honoré's 'Chansons d'amour' captured a bittersweet melancholy that perfectly fit the gray winter season in the Bastille quarter of Paris where it was set.
Some of it flits by too fast to take in the first time.Working on the adaptation with Gilles Taurand (who wrote Téchiné's excellent 'Strayed'), Honoré has shown a light touch and is working in a consistent vein that is ever more Parisian and urbane, ever more "Dans Paris." Except for "Comme la pluie" sung by Otto (Leprince-Riinguet), this film has no songs by Honoré's 'Love Songs' collaborator, Alex Beaupain.
According to the director, unfortunately, love doesn't last forever, at the end it's a very disappointing feeling and the only honest conclusion for it can be the one that happened to Otto.
The film's composition is very smart, with the storyline that appears messy for most of its duration, but all the loose ends come together by the end, when Junie makes her brave and unexpected decision (a great surprise of the film).
All the sideline events seemingly distracting from the main story lead Junie to this particular decision, more in the 17th that in the 21st century style, but justified by all she has seen and by her own uniqueness as a "completely honest person" and a "very strong person" (according to others).The choice of actors is excellent, as always the case with Honoré.
I would like to mention Léa Seydoux who has an amazing presence, which was crucial for the story to make sense.
Luis Garrel is another actor with a great magnetism who makes the story credible.In general the film is done with an impeccable cinematographic taste and it's impossible not to mention the song by Alex Beaupain, which just like in Dans Paris, is the only song in the film, but sung right on screen in the emotional climax of the film, and just like in Dans Paris, it occurs like the most natural thing.La belle personne, like the director's previous films, requires a very attentive viewing or maybe more than one viewing in order to notice the details, and the details are crucial for the adequate interpretation.
In some instances, it is also important to know some French (the crucial conflict of the lost/found letter story gets resolved once Nemour points out to Junie that from a grammatical point of view it's written by a man, and not by a woman – the moment unfortunately completely omitted from the English subtitles).
First half hour of this films wanders among characters' stories and relationships.
When the love triangle is about to close, the writer throws one his character into the void.
After teaching us the art of levity with his splendid "Les Chansons d' Amour", Cristophe Honore tackles a loose adaptation of the Princess Des Cleves in a modern day Parisian high-school.
Junie, a new comer in mid-term, joins her cousin's class, and soon afterwards gets entangled in the game of love.
Otto, a boy that I would term the common denominator of serious lovemaking and affection in the film, of stably pursuing his affection towards Junie, is in a way our guarantor in the film of common sense and, at least for me, someone to identify with.
But that happens admirably quickly and unaffectedly from both parts, even though we get to understand that Junie has recently lost her mother, that is why she came to school at this time of the year and why she gives way to moods of grave beauty.We are then introduced to the third main character, the one who is given ample presentation in a way, Nemours, a somewhat winning womanizer of both his fellow teachers and students, teacher of Italian.In one of his classes, and under the spell of Callas' Lucia di Lammermoor, Junie gets, for reasons no one probes, overwhelmed with emotion - this is the decisive moment, when Nemours and Junie pierce each other with glances signifying love.Next step, a miscast letter, that everyone thinks is Nemours' and that is being addressed to Junie, finally gets into Junie's hands - yet it is, as we come to learn, her cousin's, addressed to a boy, whence the pressure to retrieve it, though with admirable clarity and absurdity Junie surmises that it is a letter really written to her by Nemours, even though he plainly denies it.
Junie, even if having claimed the letter, does not give in to Nemours' lovemaking, but instead gives herself to Otto, after having tenderly and mischievously given him just before a children's book with the title Otto, and half-said to him that there is another person involved.
That is why Junie rebuts Otto's claim; that way, and as it should be, we loose the common denominator in love's proceedings, and love becomes fatal.
From that point on, Junie decides not to give herself to Nemours on grounds that their love will last for some time then expire, ranging it to the hordes of commonality, thing impossible, since Otto, by his suicide, raised the standard to such a degree, namely and actually loving her all his life, that anything less will be degrading.
So, after this explanation, she leaves it all behind.Up until somewhere in the middle of the movie I was still wondering to what kind of explosion C.Honore's boiling sourdine will give in, but I felt in a way that the film regressed to some kind of mannerism, in using devices of the two films that came before it, namely the singing in exactly the same tone, and using an actor/singer of the "Chansons d' Amour", right before Otto's suicide, and then, the cut editing in a somber interior reminiscing the technique involved in "Dans Paris", when Junie and Nemours finally meet, the two of them, alone, inside.
It may seem trifle, yet I took it as regressive, since C.Honore set himself the standard so high!That said given the fact that this was made for TV, it is of superlative quality as any film we come to expect from French film-makers.
Also the fact of watching the same team of actors playing in two films in a row, gives one a rare warm feeling and the wish that they would go on for some more!Even the fleeting presence of Chiara Mastroianni!
The subplot is a pleasure, too: the way the two young boys' love is presented in a mocking documentary fashion; and the way in their case the third party reacts, recurring to violence, not contending himself, as happens in the other triangle, to the violence of words.The photography is very good: a gripping, nuanced grayness allover finely portraying the incidents, and at one point, the beautiful faces of the adolescents, not exactly like the rococo fresco coming in the middle of the sequence, but the way a grave, beautiful Giotto stares us.
Beautiful actors, Nick Drake soundtrack and excellent cinematography can't hide the fact that this is a confused and amateurish story without a message.
The main problem is the script: we never get to know the characters, we don't understand what motivates them.
There is no real "story" to follow, no beginning and no end.
I liked the cold and grey colours added to the picture, which fit the mood of the film quite nicely.
She knows she is only attracted to Nemours, however, Nemours, a grown man sprouts out all these fancy words about how he was in love with her and they feel so careless coming out of his mouth as he was not convincing at all.
He was a delight, but, his voice was too weak, drowned out by all the other plots happening on screen, so much so, that the ultimate peak of the story -- his suicide -- left no impact on me.I did enjoy the ending, which I found pleasant and fitting, and a decision which was very mature of Junie.In conclusion: Aesthetically pleasing -- yes.