ViewGuide

Created Sep 11, 2013 11:33PM PST • Edited May 01, 2014 10:44AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Thérèse is a great film by the great Claude Miller of the great French novel Thérèse Desqueyroux, 1927. Think of it as Madame Bovary in the pine forests of Southwest France. Only Thérèse barely has sex, let alone affairs. Talk about a banal life. Look at her stunning poster visage. Does she look content?

   Audrey Tautou defines deep unhappiness as Thérèse. Consider that she became famous playing happy. Now that’s acting.

   Thérèse’s husband, somewhat of an ogre, cares about the family, the family’s assets and hunting, in that order. A snob and an anti-semite, he has no thoughts other than conserving what he and his family have, and therefore doesn’t expect his wife to have thoughts either. No wonder her mascara is running.

   French film lovers, feminists and Leftists will fawn over Thérèse.

   It’s also a first-rate period piece. That’s enough for me.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Audrey Tautou plays épouse Desqueyroux in one of the great performances. Perfect. Extraordinary.

   Gilles Lellouche plays her husband Bernard Desqueyroux like a French martinet, though he’s not military. Great performance.

   Anaïs Demoustier plays his sister, Anne de la Trave, who is Thérèse’s BFF. IOW one BFF marries the other’s brother, who domineers them both. Now that’s the stuff from which great novels are made.

   • Catherine Arditi plays their severe mother, Madame de la Trave.
   • Isabelle Sadoyan plays the sweet aunt, Tante Clara
   • Francis Perrin as Monsieur Larroque, Father of the Bride
   • Jean-Claude Calon as Monsieur de la Trave
   • Max Morel & Françoise Goubert as Balion & Balionte

   Stanley Weber plays the romantically handsome boy from the wrong side of the lake, Jean Azevedo

   Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi plays Thérèse à 15 ans and Matilda Marty-Giraut plays Anne de la Trave à 15. IOW, Alba & Mathilda play Audrey & Anaïs as teens. Love when they do that.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Thérèse is perfectly French, about deeply French people, families, homes and servants. It’s also an exquisite period piece about prosperous provincial France during the inter-War interregnum, complete with manor houses and servants and pine forests full of wild flowers.

    The film deftly weaves Thérèse’s fatalistic fantasies into reality. Bravo.

    Why so great? A great novel like Thérèse Desqueyroux is a great place to start.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Claude Miller outdoes himself, which means this is a directorial accomplishment akin to A Secret.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Thérèse may be gay, not to go out on a limb or anything.

    Madam Bovary sans affair, centering on a woman who will live or die trying to live, or at least waste away waiting.

    Indifference is her salvation, which makes her a bad Mother, but fortunately she and her child have her childhood BFF, now her sister-in-law.

    Loveless marriage, bringing together neighboring families of landed gentry. Convenience turns sour.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Check out the fine threads they’re wearing in the nearby pic.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

    Risqué carried a lot of weight in the 1920s.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    Implicitly socialist and feminist, the peanut-butter and jelly of the true Left, like unemployment and anger. Thérèse advances the first half of the following propositions.

    • Bad families exist, therefore families are prone to suffocating individuals.
    • Bad marriages exists, therefore women are often victimized.
    • Bad wealth exists, therefore wealth is suspect.

    Let’s note that the village in which it’s set now sends a Communist and a Socialist to the French Parliament. What a shock. Not just one, but two economy killers.

    Drought causes a forest fire. Good thing the film’s set in the 1920s or Global Warming would be blamed.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0