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| Thérèse: I wish I was in The Place Beyond The Pines |
Curzon Richmond 8/6/2013
Thérèse Desqueyroux is the last film from Claude Miller who
died last year at the age of 70. It’s based on a novel by François Mauriac set
in the 1920s about a bright young woman (Thérèse, played by Audrey Tatou) who marries her slightly dull neighbour
Bernard, played by Gilles Lelouche so that their estates can be united and they
will have thousands of acres of pines.
It is established early on that though Thérèse is
intelligent, she ‘thinks too much’ and ‘has too many ideas’, she has a
dissonant desire to unite the families – ‘I'll marry you for your pines’, she says
to her fiancée, straight-faced. Her childhood friend Anne (Anaïs Demoustier) becomes her sister in
law, and though Thérèse, frustratedly, finds her ‘simple’, for a while she is a
proxy through which Thérèse discovers the possibilities of a life lived with
passion through Anne’s dalliance with another neighbour. Thérèse’s loyalties to
the family are tested when she is assigned the task of speaking to the Jewish
neighbour to put him off. Boorish Bernard and the marriage are insufferable and
stifling and something has to give way. The stress of dealing with forest fires
on the estate one summer is the trigger for Thérèse to hit out, and the
illusive equilibrium is blown apart.
In a way it is a strange performance from Tatou. Gone
is the cutesy doe-eyed gamine from Amelie and even the straight-laced Sophie
from the execrable Da Vinci Code. She plays Thérèse with a determinedly sullen,
blank expression throughout and an uninflected voice through which she aims her
pointed asides at the dullards around her, which suits the role but makes it
hard to empathise with her. Gilles Lelouche for once does not play himself and
does a pretty solid job playing the macho, yet weak husband. I’m not convinced
the director does a great job of convincing the viewer of Thérèse’s sharp mind
(she is shown reading books and writing letters), but on the other hand I think
that not spelling out her competing motivations really makes the film. These
things are never simple and if Thérèse isn’t fully aware of the reasons behind
her actions, why should we be?
The film also steers clear of making easy judgements –
though Thérèse is trapped in this unsatisfactory situation, it is almost
entirely of her own doing, and her actions as she hits out against the
suffocating regime show she is unbalanced, we are led to sympathise more with Thérèse
than Bernard. The cinematography does full justice to the beautiful châteaux and country estates, whose
bright pastel tones contrast with the oppressive interiors and Thérèse’s sombre
appearance. Aside from the jarring change when the adult Thérèse suddenly looks 15 years older than her still adolescent childhood friend, there is plenty to like about this film, and plenty of food
for thought and scope for interpretation, but ultimately I’m not sure it hangs together as
well as it could have. 3.5/5
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