Film appreciation: Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together
As break-up dramasgo, few could match the viciousness of (1972). For an audience accustomed to the niceties of today's mainstream romantic comedies, this second film by Maurice Pialat — whose 10 features made an indelible impression on the subjects of infidelity and familial discord — may surprise with its spectrum of insults hurled around the dysfunctional relationship at its core.
Based on an autobiographical novel charting the French writer-director's unhappy personal life (including the period he spent in the south of France making the 1966 documentary short, ), this film takes an unflinching look at the patterns of emotional violence in a doomed relationship.
Beginning in the middle of a romantic train wreck, the film follows the protracted dissolution of a bitter affair between the prickly middle-aged filmmaker Jean (Jean Yanne) and his considerably younger lover Catherine (Marlène Jobert), which has gone on for six increasingly acrimonious years despite gentle acquiescence by Jean's estranged but faithful wife, Francoise (Macha Méril).
It is less a coherent sequence of events than random vignettes taken from the relationship's final stage. There are interludes where Jean laments his predicament during visits to Catherine's parents and his own father, but his obnoxious treatment of Catherine continues as we witness, time and again, how their bickering dramatically turns into abuses, submissions and apologies.
While Catherine may be a masochist who looks willing to suffer as long as she can go on enjoying the carnal side of the affair, there's a tacit understanding between the two that their cycle of break-ups and reconciliations has to stop at some point.
Improbable though it might sound, Pialat's brutal melodrama did strike a chord with the general public upon its domestic release, proving a commercial hit in France and winning Jean Yanne the best actor prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.
As the director's alter ego, Yanne's part intrigues in the way he remains unrepentant about his verbal and physical outbursts towards his forgiving partner.
