Paroles et musique (1984)
Directed by Élie Chouraqui

Film Review

Paroles et Musique, Élie Chouraqui's third feature (after Mon premier amour and Qu'est-ce qui fait courir David?), exemplifies the kind of slushy romantic drama that was popular in the 1980s but now feels hideously dated and superficial.  An unimaginative, cliché-sodden scenario, half-heartedly performed by actors who look as if they'd rather be doing something else, and intermittent bursts of '80s style pop music at its least endurable are just two reasons why this lacklustre, overlong melodrama has failed to become a classic, despite an attractive principal cast that comprises three of the decade's most popular French screen actors - Catherine Deneuve, Christophe Lambert and Richard Anconina.  Deneuve was a last minute replacement for Isabelle Adjani, who (showing surprising good taste) walked out on the film just a few days into the filming.  12-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg made her screen debut in this film, here playing Deneuve's precocious daughter - to say that she is the best thing the film has to offer is putting it mildly.

A former assistant to Claude Lelouch, Chouraqui directed around a dozen films, which include a few notable successes.  Paroles et Musique was hugely popular in its day and attracted an audience of 1.7 million.  Chouraqui's subsequent ensemble comedy Les Marmottes (1993) was also a hit and ended up spawning a successful French television series.  Partly compensating for his lack of ambition and originality, Chouraqui has a pleasing lightness of touch which endows his films with a charm to make up for their obvious lack of substance.  Paroles et Musique is far from being a complete write-off - its primary failing is that it lacks focus and depth and seems too content merely to drag its weary way at a snail's pace down an all-too-predictable path.  Only Deneuve succeeds in rendering her bland, archetypal character convincing (probably because she has played this kind of individual, an emotionally torn, independently minded neurotic, too often already); Lambert and Anconina just look like beached whales gasping for air, adding nothing but a pitiful sense of ennui to the mediocre script that fate has mischievously dumped in their in-tray.

Film Synopsis

A thriving artistic agent, Margaux Marker is having a hard time juggling her professional and family life in Paris.  Her already hectic schedule is thrown into further disarray when her husband Peter, a best-selling writer, leaves her on the spur of the moment and heads off to America for what he insists will only be a temporary separation.  Margaux is left alone to take care of their two children whilst trying to arrange an important musical event.  When the band she has booked for the event pulls out, Margaux is rescued by a pair of aspiring young musicians, Jeremy and Michel, who are presently employed in a restaurant.  The concert proves to be success and afterwards Michel hooks up with a woman named Corinne, not knowing that she is already married.  Jeremy, meanwhile, has started seeing Margaux, and despite her reluctance to get involved with another man, she is soon sharing her bed with him.   Despite her best efforts, Margaux is unable to keep this liaison from her children, but when they find out Jeremy wins them over and they come to regard him as an older brother.  On his return to Paris, Peter tells Margaux of his intention to start a new life with his family in New York.  Whilst Peter is back in America with his children, Margaux makes the most of her newfound freedom to progress her relationship with Jeremy, but she soon realises that her heart lies elsewhere.  After Margaux has left to join her family in New York, Michel and Jeremy patch up their differences but the latter is too upset by Margaux's departure to resume their professional partnership.  Jeremy is soon on his way to New York, determined to win the woman he has lost his heart to...