Aimer, boire et chanter (2014)
Directed by Alain Resnais

Film Review

Continuing the central themes of Vous n'avez encore rien vu (2012), Alais Resnais once again examines the profound relationship between love and death, life and art, in what would be his final film. Aimer, boire et chanter is the last of three films that the distinguished French auteur adapted from stage plays by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, after Smoking / No Smoking (1993) and Coeurs (2006).  In common with these previous adaptations, Resnais opts for an extreme form of stylisation that is more theatrical than cinematic, with highly artificial sets and performances that are intentionally exaggerated rather than naturalistic, with a few bizarrely surreal touches thrown in for good measure.  It is an approach that Resnais has employed on many of his films but it works particularly well with his Ayckbourn adaptations, which already possess a more than subtle detachment from reality.  Ayckbourn's 2010 play Life of Riley is all the better for the eccentric spin that Resnais gives to it in his valedictory film.

In Aimer, boire et chanter Alain Resnais returns to his favourite themes, but this time with an unexpected lightness of touch that feels at times like merciless self-parody.  The characters - three middle-aged, middle-class couples played by a distinguished quorum of French actors - are exaggerated versions of Resnais archetypes, their absurdity heightened by the vivid comic book backdrops they are frequently set against.  Nowhere is this more evident than the dipsomaniac doctor's wife, hilariously played by the director's own wife of 16 years, Sabine Azéma, who had previously featured in nine of his films.  None of the six characters we see on screen appears to have more than a tenuous grip on reality (they always look like what they are - characters in a play), and all appear to find the prospect of facing up to death difficult.  Given that Resnais was near to death himself when he made the film (at the age of 91), it is not surprising that we should see his anxieties, his reluctance to move on, reflected in his protagonists.

In essence, Aimer, boire et chanter is a richly drawn tragicomedy on the difficulty that we all have of embracing death as a natural part of life, rather than an embarrassing inconvenience to be swept under the carpet.  The character George Riley, the supposedly dying man who is constantly referred to but never seen, comes to symbolise death, an odd spectre of desire to which some of the characters (notably the women) are irresistibly drawn (repeating the familiar amour / à mort core motif of Resnais's work).  Unable to look death in the face, Riley's entourage of admirers seek out love, and so love becomes a substitute for death, one unfathomable mystery replacing another.  This same act of wilful self-delusion crops up in many of the director's previous films, perhaps most visibly in Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968), but here Resnais adopts a far more humorous tone, almost mocking his characters for their blithe reluctance to accept life as it really is.  Resnais passed away just within a month of the film's first release in France.  With his final cinematic flourish, he brings the curtain down on his remarkable career in a sweetly ironic vein, mocking not only himself and the conventions of cinema that he made a habit of fighting against, but also life itself.  A man who can laugh at life need have no fear of death.

Film Synopsis

In the midst of the Yorkshire countryside, the lives of three couples are about to be violently disrupted over a period of several months by the strange behaviour of their mutual friend George Riley.  It all begins when Colin, a doctor, inadvertently lets his wife Kathryn know that his patient, Mr Riley, has only a short time left to live.  He does not know that George was Kathryn's first love and his wife is, understandably, shocked by the revelation.  The couple, who are rehearsing a stage play with an amateur theatre company, persuade George to join them.  George ends up playing love scenes with Tamara, the wife of his best friend, Jack, a wealthy businessman and philanderer.  To save his marriage, Jack tries to persuade George's wife Monica to return to him - she left him some time ago to live with a farmer, Simeon.  To the chagrin of their respective partners, Monica, Tamara and Kathryn all end up succumbing to George's powers of seduction.  Which of them will end up accompanying him on his holiday in Tenerife?