This film inspired me to read the Julian Barnes novel in French (!), so it must have something going for it. It's your basic menage a trois movie, but is filmed with admirable restraint. The stripped back mise en scene suggests the emotional emptiness of the characters' lives, or perhaps rather their fear of emotion. It is an interesting experience in cross-channel perceptions that this quintessentially English novel (despite Barnes' obsession with France - but then francophilia is an English trait too) was turned into a French movie. The story of individual suffering in the novel (a brilliant moment where each character proclaims 'it's me who will suffer the most') is here translated into abstracted ideas about friendship and love (perhaps friendship is the 'etc' of the title. The title comes from a passage in the book (called Talking it Over in English version) where the characters discuss how letters are signed off. Love is a synonym for good-bye. Love, it seems, is unable to sustain itself - there can be no forever. This makes the ending especially poignant.(SPOILER ALERT) Marie says she is on the beach with the two men she has loved most in her life, but she can't have them both. Something will always be missing.
Review of Love, etc.
