Hôtel des Amériques (1981)
Directed by André Téchiné

Film Review

Two ill-matched lonely people who meet, fall in love and are driven apart by circumstances beyond their control...  It is a theme that director André Téchiné visits many times in his distinctive oeuvre and in Hôtel des Amériques he delivers one of his bleakest forays into the complexities and traumas of romantic love.  Téchiné made the film because he had a burning desire to work with Catherine Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere, two of the most prominent names in French cinema in the early 1980s.  This was the only occasion on which Deneuve and Dewaere appeared on screen together, and this fact alone confers on the film the status of a classic.  Although Deneuve would work with Téchiné on many future occasions, this is arguably their most successful collaboration - a brooding romantic drama that plays to both their strengths and leaves a lasting impression.

Given that the film is set in the sunny town of Biarritz, one of France's top tourist destinations, it is surprising how dark and gloomily introspective it is.  With its restricted palette and parsimonious use of lighting the film almost has the character of a film noir, which is perhaps appropriate given that both of the main characters are withdrawn wraith-like individuals reluctant to emerge from the shadows of their past experiences.  Bruno Nuytten's oppressive noir-like photography brings a note of fatalism (one of the key motifs of Téchiné's cinema), an impression that neither of the protagonists can escape from the life in which they have become trapped - not even love (or is it merely raw animal lust?) has the power to set them free.

Patrick Dewaere began his career in Café-théâtre (working alongside the great Coluche) and Téchiné acknowledges this by casting two other Café-théâtre stars, Josiane Balasko and Dominique Lavanant, in supporting roles.  The distinguished cast also includes Sabine Haudepin, who famously debuted as Jeanne Moreau's daughter in François Truffaut's Jule et Jim (1962), and Etienne Chicot, an actor renowned for playing ambiguous, dangerously volatile characters, here perfectly suited for the role of Bernard, a far less sympathetic version of Dewaere's character.

In both its tone and its subject, Hôtel des Amériques bears some similarity with André Téchiné's subsequent romantic dramas, Rendez-vous (1985), J'embrasse pas (1991) and Alice et Martin (1998), although it sets itself apart with its unremitting aura of pessimism.  Right from the start, we sense we know how the drama will pan out, and whilst it may follow an erratic and unpredictable course (another feature of Téchiné's cinema) the outcome is certain.  Dewaere has never appeared more hopelessly fragile, nor Deneuve more distant and emotionally confused, than in this sombre tale of two lost souls trying and failing to fall in love.  Coming right at the start of Téchiné's most inspired period, Hôtel des Amériques is one of the director's most lyrical and haunting films.

Film Synopsis

Hélène is a 30-something anaesthetist at a hospital in the French seaside town of Biarritz.  One evening, whilst driving home in a distracted state, she almost runs over a pedestrian, Gilles.  Hélène agrees to accompany the good-looking stranger to a late-night diner to share a drink and allow her to give him her insurance details.  Although Hélène admits that Gilles is not her type, she is strangely drawn to him.  He is about her age but he appears unsettled and vulnerable.  He lives at a hotel run by his mother and barely scrapes a living as a tourist guide.  After spending a night together, Hélène takes Gilles to a rundown house that she has inherited from a former lover.  She is unable to renovate the house, but neither can she bring herself to sell it.  Hélène's reluctance to part with the house convinces Gilles that she cannot put her last love affair behind her and this imposes a strain on their relationship.  In the end, Hélène has only one option open to her - to leave Gilles for good...