Diane Kury's has achieved the impossible, and that is recreating Francoise Sagan's life to the screen. I have not seen the telefilm, but the shortened version for the cinemas. At first I thought Sylvie Testrud would not be able to remain in character for all the different visual and voice changes in this extraordinary woman's life, but achieve it she does, and magnificently. I am not going into the details of this life, but one of the many relationships Sagan had really stood out; the relationship with Peggy Roche and their love for each other. Jeanne Balibor played her to perfection, and in this film it is essentially the women in her life that interested me most. The latter relationship with a woman called Astrid was equally well portrayed by Arielle Dombasle and her ( perhaps ) fickle nature was in total contrast to that of Peggy Roche. I agree with some reviewers that too much is played out in too little time, and the film itself is slightly flawed because of that. But I do not think it could have been otherwise. Sagan was a brilliant writer and a complex woman, and personally I would have liked Kurys to have drawn more attention to her as a dramatist as well as a fine author. And yet I feel the essential is there, and that is of a life obsessed with a sad joy of life while realising that all ends in people dying, or leaving and that solitude is too often the final feeling that most people know. It is a hard film to watch, and despite a certain softening of her political involvements it appears as accurate as it could possibly be. I hope that those who see this film will return to her books, and read her plays if they want to see how fully she was involved in that sad passion which is life itself.
Review of Sagan
