User Reviews

There's an interesting ambiguity in the original French title for there are two possible translations in English: die for love, or die out of love. Love is either the cause of death or a cause period; and you can interpret the suicide of Daniele Guenot either as an act of protest or an act of despair; it's certainly a little of both. Daniele, played by Annie Girardot, was a politically involved teacher, which made her a popular figure among her young students but earned her the animosity of Gérard's parents and ultimately the law that treated her case as if it was a new Dreyfus affair. In a France that had just went through an entire month of student's protests, that was the one but of rebellion the establishment wouldn't have.

Still, any attempt to rationalize her final act shouldn't ignore the bottom-line of that (true) story: two people loved each other but they had the misfortune of the age gap, worsened by the fact that the young man, Gérard Leguen (Bruno Pradal) was seventeen. Daniele couldn't stand the constant frowning turning her from a respected teacher to a "witch" accused of statutory rape and ended up taking her own life. The affair left a vivid impact in post-68 France and affected singer Charles Aznavour so much he dedicated a song of the same name. Aznavour's lyrics resonate like Daniele's epitaph, making her act somewhat of a posthumous victoric, a pyrrhic victory but a triumph nonetheless in the sense that she didn't abandon her true love as she was constantly coerced to. The woman decided not to be a victim but a martyr. As the song says "let's leave the world and its problems, heinous people facing themselves and their petty ideas".

And contrarly to popular belief, the song isn't used in the film. In fact, Jean Cayatte doesn't use much scoring (except for a few key moments) and his directing is rather detached and neutral showing the evolution of the romance in the form of episodic vignettes. The film opens with firemen called for emergency, we see a young woman who understand it's Daniele's balcony whose windows are being opened and she understands that whatever happened is related to gas. Obviously made for people who know about the case, Cayatte doesn't waste time for details. He opens with the tragedy from the outsider's perspective, something noisy and spectacular and concludes with a close-up on Daniele, lying, in profile, and explaining that she gave up. It's more intimate and quieter. At that point of the story, after such a harrowing journey, we're as exhausted as Daniele and when even a suspended sentence leaves no satisfaction to her detractors, we understand the existential dead-end in her mind.

What strikes in the film is how straight-forwad it is and in an ironically passionless way. The two leads aren't given an "I love you" scene worthy of Hollywood, we see them meeting, and meeting again, having good time in school with other students, with other students at the mountain, without the students and so on, they have intimate moments, they laugh together and in the very first twenty minutes, the parents understand what's going on and forbid the son to see Daniele. Pradal was 22 at the time of the life, which means 5 years older than his counterpart so it's even harder to understand the parents' reaction as he looks rather mature. Annie Girardot is 40 which means 9 years older, but can pass easily as a younger woman. Cayatte isn't concerned with exactitude but with the relationship per say: judging their passion is besides the point, they love each other, that's the point. And we're asked to embrace the perspective of the two lovers.

Therefore, the film is an extremely infuriating experience as both have to use tricks to dodge the spying of the parents and their allies, the father is played by François Simon and his hatred toward Daniele is irrational and obsessive, driven by a strong disapproval toward the moral decadence of the 68-ers. His wife doesn't say much but is carefully listening to every conversation. The parents are so stuck up that they elevate their moral to a suffocating fascism, one that leads Daniele to jail and their own son to mental institution, which was one of the tricks used by dictatorships. The son is considered either 'under Daniele's influence and deemed irresponsible even in the realm of his young age. And the deal is simple: either they renounce to each other or they'll never be free together. And events unfold so quickly that we don't even have time to question their own carelessness. Cayette shows how the system can drive people to crazy extremes in the name of morals.

The performance of Annie Girardot, one of French cinema's most endearing women is integral to the story. Girardot plays the woman with a strength that doesn't hit the melodramatic chord, she's never given occasion but that's where her true force lies, she's a woman who approaches life in a very quiet and matter of fact way, incapable to imagine that the system will always be against her. The moment she loses her faith, rationality has failed and living is impossible. Yes, it's a love story but the most notable aspect is that it's not a problem of feelings, the two do love each other, but the irrationality is that the system has elements to forbid such a law, war is the death of reason. In a way, the film reminded me of "Platoon"'s tag-line: hell is the impossibility to reason, well, that romance was their Vietnam War so to speak.

On a side-note, I'm looking forward to discovering Cayatte's 1967 other school film about a teacher (played by Jacques Brel) wrongly accused of rape by one of his students, which affected his career, his reputation and I guess, his honor.