La Séparation (1994)
Directed by Christian Vincent

Film Review

With his third feature, writer-director Christian Vincent takes his cue from Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and presents a similar emotionally charged account of a disintegrating love affair.  La Séparation is the most intense and uncompromisingly truthful of Vincent's films to date, benefiting not only from its author's sensitive treatment of a delicate subject, but also remarkable performances from its lead actors Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Auteuil, both at the absolute height of their powers.  Previously, Vincent had won widespread critical acclaim with his debut feature, La Discrète (1990), which received Césars in both the Best Screenplay and Best First Work categories.

Adapted from a novel by Dan Franck (who also assisted Vincent on the screenplay), La Séparation adopts a suffocatingly huis clos approach that focuses almost exclusively on its two central protagonists as they wake up to the fact their relationship is finally over.  Maybe they have suspected this for some time, but habit and possibly fear of a traumatic rupture has made it impossible for them to accept the truth.  The film begins at the point in the affair when the couple can no longer go on deceiving themselves.

With immense subtlety on both the writing and acting fronts, we can detect tell-tale chinks in the relationship right from the off and, as the failing love affair becomes increasing unravelled we find ourselves being led down an all too familiar path.  Once you wake up to the fact that love is dead, there is no going back.  You just have to make your way towards the exit as painlessly as you can.  Unfortunately, as the film shows with blistering sincerity, it isn't quite as straightforward as that.

Whilst Huppert is excellent (as ever) in this film, it is Auteuil whom we are compelled to sympathise with most.  Women seem better equipped to deal with a conjugal breakdown than men, and Auteuil convinces us of this with a knock-out performance that is absolutely heartbreaking to watch.  It is as if his character's whole inner being is being crushed to pulp by some insatiable emotional mangle, and his seeming inability to let his partner go with good grace, his insistence on holding on to something that is long dead, makes harrowing viewing.  There is a subtle savagery to this marvellously understated film that makes it bitterly authentic and intensely moving.

Film Synopsis

Pierre and Anne are a young couple in their thirties who have been together for several years.  They have enjoyed a harmonious and loving relationship for some time, living together in their cosy apartment with their two-year-old son Loulou.  They could not be happier.  Then, suddenly, a coldness enters their relationship.  Pierre is the first to notice this, a vague awareness of a slow drifting apart of two souls that had once been intimately wedded together.  The situation does not improve as the weeks go by. From this slight impression of coldness develops a sense of estrangement, and the once loving couple are soon painfully aware of the gulf opening up between them.

Finally, Anne has to come clean and admit that she has started to see another man.  Pierre had suspected as much but even when his partner delivers the damning news with her own words he can scarcely take it in.  Suddenly, he feels his whole world collapsing around him.  Where there was once devotion and understanding there is now bitterness and resentment.  It's true - their love is dead.  There is only one way out of this mess - Anne and Pierre must agree to an amicable separation.  But how can they do so without harming themselves and their precious child...?