Romantic cinema at its best
How far is Emmanuel Mouret’s new, formidable and intoxicating love story Three friendsdoes it say something new about the world? Something we’ve never seen before that manages to captivate when anyone else on the same subject would fail in the first minute? In any case it’s good As soon as measure that is at the heart of Emmanuel Mouret’s know-how, his ability to balance lightness and gravity in expert dissection and then the modern reinvention of marivaudage.
This measure is initially welcomed as musical, with an opening on a classical theme by Beethoven, taken from an elegant corpus that Emmanuel Mouret explores in his films as much as he explores his images. Three friendsit is above all a sweet music, that of love. I love you, whispered and shouted, three friends and three distinct romantic feelings that will flow together. Music and dance therefore, for a great show conducted by exceptional actresses and actors in the balance developed by the screenwriter and director.
A wonderful cast
Camille Cottin is the protagonist Three friends Alicea woman fulfilled in the affectionate routine of her couple. But, after a strange dream, he will have an adventure. A happy story contrasted by the discovery that her partner, Éric (Grégoire Ludig), has also been having an adulterous relationship for some time. Will Alice find out that Eric is having this clandestine relationship with one of his closest friends?
Rebeccaplayed by Sara Forestier, she is captured by her joy of living, by her feeling of love so powerful and happy that Eric’s infidelity and her own towards Alice do not worry her. Equipped with impressive mental strength, she is the one who best embodies the classic figure of marivaudagefunny and delicately intriguing, with a more comical line than his scene companions. But beneath the ambition to “nibble” life emerges, with surprising subtlety, an idea of old soul in Rebecca, the sad wisdom of those who know that ideal, pure love, the one that constantly agitates the world, exists only in the present of words, kisses and relationships, and that its future or past projection is a murderous idea .
This love that kills, this love that crushes everything, it is Joanna (India Hair) who lives it, literally. In a monotonous relationship with Victor (Vincent Macaigne), she is mortified the day she realizes she no longer feels love for him. She is in fact torn between her authenticity – she doesn’t want to stay in a relationship if she doesn’t love – and the consequences of this authenticity for Victor.
Love, but without gambling and chances?
Joan is as desirable as she is desired, and thanks to India Hair’s imperious performance in the role, she discovers something of the mystery of The beast in the jungle of Henry James, this certainty that a gravity will arrive that will weigh irremediably on his destiny and that of others. And something serious happens when, at the end of a wonderful scene under an old stone porch, she leaves Victor.
India Hair sublimates Emmanuel Mouret’s film, whose theater is obviously not a boulevard but takes on a lightness that could be defined as artificial. Heterosexual forty-year-olds, university professors and artists, his characters live in apartments as comfortable as they are interchangeable and have only love in their minds and hearts. This bubble could appear protected and privileged to the point of implausibility. Or conventional and childish to the point of annoyance. But that’s not the case, thanks to the very fine writing and incarnation of India Hair. It is in her that the director finds surprising cinema, and it is on her worried face that the spectator’s eyes stop and his heart beats when she gasps during a film. climax light.
Thus, through Joan, the main role of the film despite the title, a meaning appears opposite to the human comedy that is unfolding. Joan is consumed by a terrible certainty. Does love arise by chance? Is love decided? Neither of them seem to think about Joan, and it’s not a thing for her in any way game. In this fascinating space opened by India Hair with its interpretation of yet another declination of the protection work The game of love and chance, Three friends A dazzling human drama is then revealed.
The delicate art of profound lightness
Without counterfeiting, Three friends therefore he builds a palace of the delights and above all of the great pains of love. A building where three women, like a captivating pictorial triptych, are three portraits of this feeling. Around them, the men are their objects of desire but on the margins of the image, as if pulled by force from off-screen where they have fun. Kind, they are consciously and pleasantly next to the plate. This is largely what Vincent Macaigne means, in his dramatic and sentimental register that he was so successful at, and which endures Three friends a role spectralthat of the story’s voice-over and of a character who disappears, twice, from the image.
So, if the film is approached lightly, it is for its own entertainment but also as a Trojan horse. Under his ringing air, Emmanuel Mouret leads his characters in a profound and delicate exploration of the feeling of love, right down to its tragic contours. In Three friendsindecision, loneliness, the disappearance of love and the loved one, death itself, all these uncomfortable and sad sensations end up emerging and being experienced as equal to the lightness that led them there. It is impossible, therefore, to remain indifferent and unscathed when the last notes of this perfectly accomplished symphony of love sound.
Three friends by Emmanuel Mouret, in theaters from November 6, 2024. Above is the trailer.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
