Quelques heures de printemps (2012)
Directed by Stéphane Brizé

Film Review

The solemn spectre of Ingmar Bergman looms over Stéphane Brizé's latest film, a chillingly austere drama in which a mother and her son strive to achieve a reconciliation having spent most of their lives hating and rejecting one another.  (Bergman's Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sonata are obvious points of reference.)  In his fifth and most impressive film to date, Brizé broaches the controversial and highly topical subject of assisted suicide (with considerable tact and impartiality), although this is not what the film is about.  Quelques heures de printemps (a.k.a. A Few Hours of Spring) is primarily concerned with the two defining themes of Brizé's oeuvre: the complexities of male-female relationships and the difficulty of communicating one's deepest feelings to another human being.  This time, the central relationship is not a romantic one, but one involving a depressive middle-aged man and his terminally ill mother who are trapped in a bitter love-hate relationship (a Bergman-esque take on a situation that was mined to death in the British TV sitcom Steptoe and Son).  The film's sombre tone and languorous pace will doubtless limit its appeal, but for those who are not intimidated by such things it is hard not be ensnared, intellectually and emotionally, by the delicacy with which it tackles a difficult subject.

The star of Brizé's previous film Mademoiselle Chambon (2009), Vincent Lindon is an admirable choice to play the grouchy, introverted son Alain, and it is hard to think of a better actress than Hélène Vincent for the role of the equally cantankerous mother Yvette.  It is an inspired pairing and both actors turn in performances of Oscar-winning (or, rather César-winning) potential.  From the outset, we know that there is far more to the characters and their relationship than is apparent on the surface.  Their heated verbal exchanges would suggest that they have nothing but an undying contempt for one another, and yet it is obvious that they have an intense mutual need and that the years of accumulated rancour have not totally extinguished their better feelings for one another.  The tragedy is that both characters are so immured in their enforced solitude that they are incapable of expressing what they genuinely feel and recognising the needs of the other.  So they go on biting lumps out of each other, like a pair of feuding velociraptors guesting on The Jerry Springer Show, perpetually stranded in their own emotional deserts.  It takes a chance event - Alain's discovery that his mother has an inoperable brain tumour - to bring them both to their senses and make them realise how little time is left for them to achieve a desperately needed reconciliation.

One of the difficulties with the film is that it is extraordinarily difficult to engage with either of the main characters.  Despite their flawless performances, Vincent Lindon and Hélène Vincent do nothing to endear their characters to us.  Brizé's habitually minimalist mise-en-scène has a further distancing effect and it feels as if the director is doing everything he can to prevent his audience from sympathising with his characters (à la Brecht, Bresson and Bergman).  It's a risky strategy but it just about pays off in the film's final sequences, which would probably have had far less of an impact if we had been closer to the characters.  It can be argued that the main role of any artist is to portray life as authentically as he can, without artifice or subterfuge, and in this respect Brizé is mostly successful.  Quelques heures de printemps is not as easy to watch as some of his previous films, but it is unquestionably Brizé's most astute statement of the human condition so far. 

The only thing that jars in this remarkable film are the somewhat half-hearted attempts to lighten the tone and bring a little sunshine into the gloom.  The amorous digression with Emmanuelle Seigner feels like a casual afterthought, as does the darkly comedic episode in which Yvette poisons her son's dog (inspired no doubt by Pierre Granier-Deferre's Le Chat, in which Simone Signoret is driven to kill Jean Gabin's beloved cat, for similar reasons).  Whilst these diversions are not entirely unwelcome, they feel clumsily crowbarred into the narrative and take away more than they add.  Generally, the secondary characters in the film are poorly developed and are at best no more than complacent archetypes (the dog excluded).

The film is far more impressive in its second half, which focuses on Alain's attempt to connect with his dying mother and becomes increasingly compelling as it looks more and more like a documentary.  Dialogue is sparse but the long silences say far more than any amount of verbiage, and you are constantly struck by the subtlety and depth of the lead actors' performances.  Even when Alain accedes to his mother's wishes to end her life in a Swiss suicide clinic, it still seems unlikely that either character will be able to break through the emotional barricades they have erected.  The final journey that Alain and Yvette take together is as much an emotional one as it is a physical one.  It is only by finding the courage to express what they genuinely feel about each other that they will escape their personal hell, the one to find dignity in death, the other to rebuild his fractured life.  It is a simple story, simply told, but by the end of it you are emotionally devastated.

Film Synopsis

When he is released from prison after serving an 18 month sentence for drugs smuggling, Alain Evrard has no choice but to move back in with his elderly mother, Yvette.  The reunion is not a happy one.  Alain, now 48, cannot forgive his mother for how she has ill-treated him in the past, and Yvette cannot conceal her contempt for her son, a man who has failed at everything.  Then, one day, Alain discovers that his mother has a terminal illness and that she has made arrangements to end her life at a Swiss clinic which specialises in assisted suicide.  In the few days that they have left together, will mother and son be able to put aside their differences and finally make a connection...?