“A passing relationship”, the nuances of feelings. Score 7 and 1/2 – Corriere.it

The two protagonists of A passing relationship. And their relationship could not be told in a more surprising way. But let’s also say right away that a film would hardly have been able to better capture the nuances that love can assume, made up of desire, surprise, tenderness and, why not, even embarrassment. We understand it right from the first scene, where the justificationist babblings put forward by Simon (Vincent Macaigne, by now a pillar of French cinema) are repeated one on top of the other by the urgency of Charlotte’s desire (Sandrine Kiberlain, perfect in this role of a truly free).

We see them on the evening of their second meeting: a spark has struck between the two but the man comes up with a thousand excuses, his masculine insecurities, his marriage, his surprise at being tempted by an adventure. He moves continuously in a fairly crowded room but Emmanuel Mouret’s camera doesn’t give him a break and presses him in every move, just like Sandrine who has no problem confessing her desire to him: she wants to sleep with him. Her “brakes” are opposed by her “accelerations”, capable of getting around any obstacle. Neither morality nor convenience seem capable of stopping the desire that both confess, the woman with more sincere immediacy, the man with more twisted condescension. To mark this story, only the dates on the calendar: it all begins on February 28 and continues without any foreseeable deadline. Former singer of love and its declinations (
Change of address, Just one kiss please, Lady J
), Mouret, who co-wrote the screenplay with Pierre Giraud, seems to enjoy removing every possible foothold or justification from the viewer: they will have to spend two thirds of the film before learning about their real family situations but we will never see who is part of it. We just have to trust their conversations, which often end up wandering, touching topics that seem unrelated to their relationships, chasing sudden digressions or strange curiosities.

There is an air of Woody Allen and why not of Lubitsch but while those films resembled long prologues to finally tell how passion took shape, here everything is already taken for granted, for accomplished. And the spectator is confronted with a relationship “in purity”, with no lessons to learn, no morals to draw. Sometimes a third character comes into play, like Simon’s slightly lewd friend who lends him the house or the woman who, opening the gym locker, finds herself overhearing (and us with her) the speeches that the two protagonists they exchange locked inside their changing rooms, without knowing they are being listened to. But neither one nor the other manages to interfere in the behavior of the two lovers (the friend’s proposals are immediately rejected, the woman’s curiosity obviously ignored) because the film must be free to continue along its path. And if by chance one of the two seems to want to pull back (as in the scene of the confrontation in the bookstore) the lens of a highly mobile camera takes care of bringing the two back to our eyes. And above all within reach of our ears, because as they say at a certain moment “we like making love as much as talking”.

Naturally, something will come to upset that surprising balance but once again without any moralistic or guilty aftermath. The desire to chase a common ghost will eventually unbalance their relationship, making it lean on one side. But without ever reaching those tensions that Simon and Charlotte will see one day at the cinema, where it is projected Scenes from a wedding by Ingmar Bergman. No, if there’s anything that can suggest what their relationship is like, it’s the song by Serge Gainsbourg La Javanaise (which we hear sung by Juliette Greco), where grace and delicacy crown the sentimental lightness that the two lovers have chased and found.