Mal de pierres (2016)
Directed by Nicole Garcia

Film Review

After a somewhat tentative foray into social realism with Un beau dimanche (2014), Nicole Garcia returns to full-on melodrama with this seductively sensual adaptation of Milena Agus's 2006 novel Mal de pierres.  Garcia talents are best employed in sober and intimate character studies - evidenced by her earlier films Le Fils préféré (1994) and L'Adversaire (2002) - so she is in her element in tackling this modern version of Madame Bovary, time-shifted to 1950s rural France.  In this film, she is admirably served by her lead actress Marion Cotillard, who reaches the pinnacle of her art with a lurid portrayal of a rebellious woman lashing out against the puritanical conformity of her age in her quest for personal fulfilment.

Cotillard's tour de force performance may be compelling but it is also disturbing as it reveals an extreme facet of femininity that is hard to come to grips with. Gabrielle's single-minded yearning for physical love makes her an egocentric and unappealing character, but we still sympathise with her, she being of that generation of women who were unable to live as freely as they wished and had their sexual identity practically beaten out of them by a prudish patriarchal society.  The first part of the film depicting Gabrielle's rebellion against her straitlaced community has a bitter poignancy to it and when the unfortunate woman is coerced into marrying a man she despises she can hardly help resembling a pressure cooker about to explode.

Gabrielle's release comes when she is packed off to a sanatorium and finds a handsome officer André, played by an unusually subdued Louis Garrel.  What happens from then on is entirely predictable, with Garcia routinely delivering just the appropriate quantity of naked flesh and a rather obvious denouement with the casual detachment of a school dinner lady serving up a plate of fish fingers.  And this is the problem with the entire film.  Nicole Garcia is too 'old school' to give the film the modern resonance that it needs to avoid looking like a staid period piece.  Garcia's mise-en-scène is too measured and clinical for Agus's fiery scenario to ignite in the way it should, and even with an actress as incandescent and vital as Marion Cotillard the film feels, like the unfortunate woman it depicts, hopelessly constrained by conventionality.  Seemingly reluctant to embrace fully the erotic possibilities of its source novel, Mal de pierres ends up being more of a tepid melodrama than a torrid tale of passion.

Film Synopsis

Gabrielle is a young woman living with her parents in a small village in the south of France.  In the hope of taming her wild and tempestuous nature her parents force her into marrying a farm labourer, José,  even though she has no feelings for him.  Gabrielle bitterly resents the marriage and pines for an all-consuming romance that will satisfy her excessive physical and emotional needs.  This is what she finds when she is sent to take a health cure for her kidney stones at a sanatorium.   As soon as she sees André Sauvage, a wounded veteran of the Indochina war, Gabrielle realises he is her passport to happiness.  What begins as an innocent friendship quickly develops into a romantic fling and then a frenzied amour fou.  But is this eruption of passion enough to satisfy Gabrielle's intense yearnings..?