Film - Think

This one flew under my radar until I saw an old poster for it hanging up in some cinema on the right bank. Civeyrac recently screened a new film at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I am looking forward to seeing whether or not Les doux amour des homes was just an accident. Inspired by the biography of Jean de Tinan, a 19th century French writer, it traces the loves and losses of a contemporary author in Paris. Raoul’s half-hearted romantic conquests eventually lead him to the hectic embrace of Jeanne. Her peculiar sort of passion becomes Raoul’s answer to the gnawing loneliness young authors seem prone to. But when it turns out that she has a terminal illness and dies, Raoul struggles through his grief, eventually coming back to life with a new novel.

In Civeyrac’s hands, even such a worn out plot becomes emotionally engaging. He is able to develop a sense of the first-person without a lot of flashy tricks. Other than the fantastic soundtrack, Civeyrac only leans on Renaud Becard’s performance and perfect Parisian locations to bring this century old biography to life. Though he doesn’t moralize Raoul’s predicament, as Raoul is far too preoccupied with himself and his desires to deal with Jeanne’s death in any other terms than writing a book about it, Civeyrac doesn’t seem to let him off the hook. Raoul embodies the romantic ideal so much that he is every bit as two-dimensional as a character from a novel by Zola.