les chose de la vie II

"Claude Sautet creates an understatedly haunting, sophisticated, and insightful portrait of emotional attachment, indecision, and intimacy in Les choses de la vie. Structuring the narrative of the film in medias res as the middle-aged protagonist is transported to the hospital, Sautet figuratively reflects Pierre's emotional uncertainty as he struggles with the inertia of commitment and a new life with Hélène, unable to sever the bonds of common history associated with his failed marriage to Catherine: Hélène's self-imposed exclusion (and unshared family memories) from the Bérard island home in Ré; Pierre's procrastination over a visa application for a long-term business trip to Tunisia; his fixated preoccupation with a damaged table in the summer house; his impulsively written, unaddressed letter to Hélène that reveals his innate ambivalence. Inevitably, as Pierre unconsciously ponders his unfinished household tasks - the trivial "things of life" that bind him to his estranged family - what is revealed is a resigned longing for a lifetime of irretrievable memories and an irreconcilable sentiment of profound regret." (strictly film school)


p.s. strictly undubbed