Sept jours ailleurs (1969)
Directed by Marin Karmitz

Film Review

Marin Karmitz's main claim to fame is that he is the founder of MK2, France's most successful independent film production and distribution company.  What is less well known is that Karmitz originally founded MK2 primarily to distribute the films which he himself had directed, innovative auteur pieces which strongly reflected their author's social preoccupations and leftwing political leanings.  Karmitz's output as a filmmaker was modest, completely dwarfed by his impressive tally as a producer.  Between 1963 and 1972, he directed four shorts and three full-length films, of which Sept jours ailleurs is the first and, arguably, most inspired.  Although this latter film is not as well-known as it should be, it is as astonishing an auteur debut piece as any film made by Karmitz's  Nouvelle Vague contemporaries.

Karmitz shot Sept jours ailleurs in 1967 and it powerfully reflects the mood of alienation and disillusionment that was endemic across most strata of French society at the time.  This stemmed from a dissatisfaction with consumerism, a mistrust of capitalism, a loathing for the establishment (represented by its chief bogeyman, President de Gaulle) and a burning contempt for bourgeois values - all of which would culminate in the mass protests across France in May 1968.  Like Jean-Luc Godard's more overtly anarchic Week-End (1967), Sept jours ailleurs is eerily prescient and provides an almost viscerally tangible impression of the anger and frustration that was building in the colleges, factories and households across France as the Fifth French Republic drifted blithely towards its greatest crisis.

Plotwise, there is virtually nothing to the film.  It's just an anodyne tale of a married man indulging in a spot of marital infidelity whilst away from home for a few days.  The plot, what there is of it, is the least important element of the film.  Karmitz uses this as no more than a coat hook on which to hang his concerns about the time he is living through, concerns fragranced by a festering aura of disenchantment and revulsion for the status quo.  Right from the first scene, the world that Karmitz plunges us into is bitterly comfortless, almost alien, a kind of purgatory for the half-dead.  Dialogue comes only in fleeting snatches, brief interludes in an aural landscape dominated by urban noises and the kind of electronic music you would expect to hear in an avant-garde sci-fi movie.

The people in the film are not entirely dehumanised but they appear remote and have difficulty connecting with one another.  The only scene with any real human feeling is the one in which the main protagonist Jacques (Jacques Higelin) is seen playing with his infant daughter.  For the most part, Jacques inhabits a cold, synthetic world that at times is frighteningly unreal, and his fleeting moments of happiness with his mistress Catherine are like oases in a vast existential desert.  The extent of Jacques's alienation is most apparent in the sequence towards the end of the film in which he is taking a ride on the Paris metro.  The musician is tempted to reach for the door handle and an easy way out of his crushingly empty existence.  Then he drifts into sleep and when he comes to there is an abrupt cut and we see him falling through water.  When Jacques reaches his home, he sees it not as a refuge or place of comfort but as a tiny cell in a colossal apartment block, furnished with those essentials of modern living that now appear to be mere icons glorifying the pagan gods of consumerism and conformity.  When the film ends, with a succession of close-ups of Jacques contemplating the abject meaningless of his life, we are left with the most profound sense of despair.

Film Synopsis

Jacques is a 30-something musician who is married, has a young daughter, but is far from fulfilled.  Trapped in a sterile marriage, he welcomes the opportunity to spend seven days on tour with a modern dance company in the south of France.  Whilst away from home, he falls under the spell of an attractive young dancer, Catherine, and as they pursue a passionate love affair he enjoys a temporary release from his monotonous existence.  All too soon, he must return to Paris, to a life that means nothing...