Le parfum d'Yvonne (1994)
(Yvonne's Perfume)
Country: FR
Technical: col/Panavision 85m
Director: Patrice Leconte
Cast: Hippolyte Girardot, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Sandra Majani, Richard Bohringer
Synopsis:
A young man dodging the Algerian draft by a Swiss lake in 1958 falls in with an actress and her eccentric friend.
Review:
Patrick Modiano's novel is the quintessential Leconte vehicle, a melancholic love story suffused with ornate eroticism and romantic fatalism. It cuts backwards and forwards in flashback style, retaining till the end the chilling card up its sleeve, but without ever really stopping to examine its characters. Victor, whose non-committal acceptance of Yvonne's devotion might be mistaken for conceitedness, is surely anything but a Russian count - his smile seems to confirm it - while the one insight into Yvonne's extraordinary compliance ('She could never do anything but live life for the present') is provided by Marielle's choleric gay doctor very late in the day. Nevertheless, these failings apart, the film is full of atmosphere, the period well caught, and Victor follows closely in the footsteps of Antoine in The Hairdresser's Husband, another character whose unspeakable good fortune cannot last. By the way, the titular scent is never mentioned, but one can imagine...
(Yvonne's Perfume)
Country: FR
Technical: col/Panavision 85m
Director: Patrice Leconte
Cast: Hippolyte Girardot, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Sandra Majani, Richard Bohringer
Synopsis:
A young man dodging the Algerian draft by a Swiss lake in 1958 falls in with an actress and her eccentric friend.
Review:
Patrick Modiano's novel is the quintessential Leconte vehicle, a melancholic love story suffused with ornate eroticism and romantic fatalism. It cuts backwards and forwards in flashback style, retaining till the end the chilling card up its sleeve, but without ever really stopping to examine its characters. Victor, whose non-committal acceptance of Yvonne's devotion might be mistaken for conceitedness, is surely anything but a Russian count - his smile seems to confirm it - while the one insight into Yvonne's extraordinary compliance ('She could never do anything but live life for the present') is provided by Marielle's choleric gay doctor very late in the day. Nevertheless, these failings apart, the film is full of atmosphere, the period well caught, and Victor follows closely in the footsteps of Antoine in The Hairdresser's Husband, another character whose unspeakable good fortune cannot last. By the way, the titular scent is never mentioned, but one can imagine...
(Yvonne's Perfume)
Country: FR
Technical: col/Panavision 85m
Director: Patrice Leconte
Cast: Hippolyte Girardot, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Sandra Majani, Richard Bohringer
Synopsis:
A young man dodging the Algerian draft by a Swiss lake in 1958 falls in with an actress and her eccentric friend.
Review:
Patrick Modiano's novel is the quintessential Leconte vehicle, a melancholic love story suffused with ornate eroticism and romantic fatalism. It cuts backwards and forwards in flashback style, retaining till the end the chilling card up its sleeve, but without ever really stopping to examine its characters. Victor, whose non-committal acceptance of Yvonne's devotion might be mistaken for conceitedness, is surely anything but a Russian count - his smile seems to confirm it - while the one insight into Yvonne's extraordinary compliance ('She could never do anything but live life for the present') is provided by Marielle's choleric gay doctor very late in the day. Nevertheless, these failings apart, the film is full of atmosphere, the period well caught, and Victor follows closely in the footsteps of Antoine in The Hairdresser's Husband, another character whose unspeakable good fortune cannot last. By the way, the titular scent is never mentioned, but one can imagine...