Tendresse Ordinaire is simple to describe in terms of story (it has virtually none) and yet it is almost impossible to describe how this film affects me. The `plot' is that a woman living in rural Quebec waits for her husband, a lumberjack working far away, to return home. Occasionally she reminisces, and occasionally we glimpse her husband at work. There are no huge conflicts, and very little dialogue. Even the when we see the two together, they hardly talk. It is simply the act of being together that is important.
I read a review of Tendresse Ordinaire that began with a quote by the great Italian neo-realist screenwriter, Caesar Zavattini: "I would love to film twenty-four hours in the life of a man to whom nothing happens." "Tendresse Ordinaire" is about as close as you can get to a realization of that quote. This should be boring, but it isn't, for every little act takes on a major significance. What would bring any faster paced film to a dead halt, helps turn this film into a hypnotic study of human behavior. If Gilles Carle's "L'ange et la femme" was hypnotic for its dream-like surrealism, then "Tendresse Ordinaire" is hypnotic for its stark realism.
There is one scene of a lumberjack singing a song on a train heading to the work site that would couldn't have been so powerful if it weren't so simply presented. Just one three minute, unmoving medium shot of the man singing his lonely song has incredible power in the context of this film. Another scene, the final one, where Esther sits alone at the kitchen table, gets up, goes upstairs, changes her clothes, then walks downstairs and stands on the porch to wait for her man to come home, is incredibly heart rending. No music, no dialogue. It is the forthright honesty of that scene that affects me every time.
Tendresse Ordinaire reminds me of "Les Bucherons de la Manouane" (1962) by Arthur Lamothe. That film is like the flip side to "Tendresse Ordinaire", where we get a good look at the lonely life of lumberjacks up in the deep forests. Although that film is a documentary and "Tendresse Ordinaire" is a fictional film, there is great realism in both. They would make a great double bill. We truly get sense of the isolation both sides must feel in a situation like where a husband and wife are separated for such long stretches of time. Ultimately it is those little moments that we tend to forget that truly define us.
I read a review of Tendresse Ordinaire that began with a quote by the great Italian neo-realist screenwriter, Caesar Zavattini: "I would love to film twenty-four hours in the life of a man to whom nothing happens." "Tendresse Ordinaire" is about as close as you can get to a realization of that quote. This should be boring, but it isn't, for every little act takes on a major significance. What would bring any faster paced film to a dead halt, helps turn this film into a hypnotic study of human behavior. If Gilles Carle's "L'ange et la femme" was hypnotic for its dream-like surrealism, then "Tendresse Ordinaire" is hypnotic for its stark realism.
There is one scene of a lumberjack singing a song on a train heading to the work site that would couldn't have been so powerful if it weren't so simply presented. Just one three minute, unmoving medium shot of the man singing his lonely song has incredible power in the context of this film. Another scene, the final one, where Esther sits alone at the kitchen table, gets up, goes upstairs, changes her clothes, then walks downstairs and stands on the porch to wait for her man to come home, is incredibly heart rending. No music, no dialogue. It is the forthright honesty of that scene that affects me every time.
Tendresse Ordinaire reminds me of "Les Bucherons de la Manouane" (1962) by Arthur Lamothe. That film is like the flip side to "Tendresse Ordinaire", where we get a good look at the lonely life of lumberjacks up in the deep forests. Although that film is a documentary and "Tendresse Ordinaire" is a fictional film, there is great realism in both. They would make a great double bill. We truly get sense of the isolation both sides must feel in a situation like where a husband and wife are separated for such long stretches of time. Ultimately it is those little moments that we tend to forget that truly define us.
