Coeurs

Alain Resnais - 2006
Adaption of Ayckbourn play, 'private fears in public places'- apt title. Resnais' direction is consciously, surely, quiet direction, till at least the end, so I'll pay the respect of not giving moves more than their functional worth.
All the same huge colours of red and blue, those oranges also in 'On Connait...', all extremely warm, vare used. Clearly the reason for the Almodovar comparison (except Resnais uses them thematically in a clearer way, perhaps... though I shouldn't really comment). Either way, the direction of longer compositions, moving in on the wide format for emphasis, is always beautful, elegant.
What are the themes? An examination of the private sphere, hiddenness. The fear of the open space. Think about video; a private pleasure of something public, dare one share?
The great success of this film, on its surface is its build up and examination of fasinating characters. But we also have a double move, studying the idea of fascination; beyond Ayckbourn? Their is a sense of studying rats, of an examination from an outside context of these lives, more than just emotion in cinema (or a different kind of emotion). This is created by some vertical high camera, the unreal colours colours, the little pods people are framed through. The short scenes, the snow that comes between them as a transition, lets us know the artifice of the montage (though not of the lives?). In these ways, I was reminded more than anything of 'Tout La Memoire De La Monde'; study of things, knowledge, from above (there's even a track at one point!). Yet this film combines this format with humanism (not that 'Tout La...' may not as well), in the sympathetic look at these rats; life as serious, though it is tiny.
At the end, there is a move away from the classically realist, with expressive mis-en-scene as snow invades the living room, the camera starts making itself noticed with wild circling and jumpy editing, the light at the end is a series of spots. Is this Resnais trying not to deceive us; let us understand we have watched a study, not something called 'reality?' Or is he rather saying that this is what reality is? I must leave the habit of thing someone is 'saying' something. After all, this film is one of fasination, it is also 'heartfelt', contemplative, a sstudy- and a great modern one.