Se souvenir des belles choses

Saw this together with my wife. After 40 minutes, wife wanted to walk out. No, I said, it must get better. It didn't. By the end, you just want to stick your head in the oven. It's so depressing. No doubt dementia and amnesia are horrible things, but that's exactly why making a movie around them is a zero on the entertainment scale.

The cases of Alzheimer disease in senior people are quite known (we have the famous film "Still Alice with Julianne Moore), but in this film Claire Poussin, a quite young feels the first symptomes of this terrible disease and we shall follow her in her life. A brilliant film, a touching story. The performances of Isabelle Carré and Bernard Campan are really excellent. Thank you very much, Zabou Breitman for this very touching story.

Se Souvenir des Belles Choses: i can only even begin to describe the greatness of this movie and the impact it has made in mind. After months of anticipation, i saw this film in Richmond, Virginia, as a part of the 11th annual VCU French Film Festival at the Byrd Theatre. Warning: i cried for a good 45 minutes.

This is not to say the film was depressing. It was simply so moving.

With Isabelle Carré portraying the lead in brilliant form, Se Souvenir des Belles Choses (lit.: To Remember Beautiful Things) offers a truly amazing view into the world of mental hospitals, specifically dealing with memory loss and Alzheimer's patients. Two of these patients share a heartbreaking love story when symptoms worsen and improve.

Technically speaking, the film is a masterpiece. Do your best to see this one.

This is, no contest, one of the finest movies to come out of France in the last five years and it would have been a grave miscarriage of justice if Isabelle Carre had not won a Best Actress Cesar for this role. I had seen Carre in several movies and found her competent but nothing special then, all at once the right career-defining role turns up and she shows what she can do. I can pay her no higher compliment than to compare her performance here to that of namesake Isabelle Huppert (the finest French actress bar none) in 'La Dentelliere' (The Lacemaker) with the proviso that Huppert was approximately 10 years younger than Carre when turning in her prize-winning performance. Carre is luminous and for virtually the whole of the running time she gives the impression of a real victim of Alzheimer's so that we feel we are watching a documentary rather than a film that has been scripted, shot and acted. The actors throughout are first rate, not least Bernand Campan as Carre's lover and protector. I saw the movie in an art-house in Balard last year (it's still playing there albeit only one or two screenings per week) and in September of this year I found it on DVD and can play it whenever I like. Out of ten stars it has to rate fifteen. One word description? Can't be done. Lyrical? In spades. Enthralling? And the rest. Magnifique? Doesn't come close. Thank you, Isabelle, Zabou, Campan, thank you for some unforgettable memories.

Here's another eloquent example of an actress who decided to show her potential as a female director: Zabou Breitmann also known as Zabou, full stop. The topic of her premier film gives the inkling that she doesn't fear thorny subjects. Indeed, Alzeihmer's disease and the loss of memory are rather way off cinema's radar. But it's a film to remember which is also a prime example that love can be strong and survive to any disease.

"Se Souvenir Des Belles Choses" is split into two parts. The first one takes place in the institution for people with troubled memory. Before the anticipated meeting between the two lovers that Zabou delays, she takes her time to relate and describe life conditions in this institution for the sick people and the team of doctors and nurses. She delivers a not so despondent and warm description of this place and grants a meaty place to humor and tenderness. The second part starts with the returning of Christine and Philippe in the normal world and as the latter bit by bit recovers his memory, Christine's disease gathers pace and makes her lose her marks and collapse. These are two parts that follow each other and complement themselves.

The serious problem of Alzeihmer's disease is explored without tawdry fascination or unhealthy complacency but with a minimum of objectivity and lucidity. A good proportion of sequences or details directly or indirectly linked to it ring true like the instructions left on the white board or recorded on a tape for Christine or in the institution with these strips of colors indicating the way to specific places. Zabou also didn't forget the people's dangerous behaviors facing sick people with Alzeihmer's disease. See the sequence in the supermarket when Christine's mother gives her a meeting in a precise place and poor Christine loses herself.

Zabou was right to give the main role to Isabelle Carré whose role propelled her in the restrained circle of the new young luminaries of contemporary French cinema alongside Sylvie Testud among others. She gives a startling performance supported by Bernard Campan who managed to make me forget that he was once part of this irresistible comic trio the Inconnus. For their fans, who could have thought among them that he was able to act a man at a loss with a great credibility whereas he was so far usually typecast in comical roles? The female director Zabou relegated herself in a secondary role of analyst and her love affair with the director acted by Bernard Le Coq is one of the tiny glitches her film shelters which make it (the film) impossible to reject. This is one to remember.