ART – FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 AT 0:45 – CINEMA
Half a century ago, in Europe, public services (television, in the West, cinema, in the East) produced objects that resembled – from afar – my wife’s storyadaptation of a classic of Hungarian literature by Milan Füst, published in 1942: the story of the love that unites and separates a Dutch ship captain and a Parisian socialite.
Delicately photographed by cinematographer Marcell Rév, the reconstruction of Mitteleuropa in the 1920s is exquisite but a little eccentric, the adventures are told without rushing by always successful actors. Maintaining this veneer would be missing out on what makes the film great, whose shield is stuck at the end of the story: shots of whales spinning under the waves on whose surface Captain Jakob Störr (Gijs Naber) sails.
What Ildiko Enyedi really films is what’s underneath. Somewhere, deep within the brief happiness and long unhappiness of captain and socialite, Lizzy (Léa Seydoux), lie the root causes of the war between men and women. What we thought was a wise romance is actually a martial, sensual and heartbreaking epic.
Almost infinite love
To rid himself of the “sailor’s disease”, Jakob makes a bet with the thief Kodor (Sergio Rubini) that he will marry the first woman who crosses the threshold of the café where the two men are drinking. Without Kodor, the sailor heads towards the table of the chosen one, whom he has only seen from his back. Lucky: when you turn your head, you have the face of Léa Seydoux. A radiant woman, who is surprised by nothing, not even the marriage proposal that occurs a few seconds after her meeting with the bearded colossus, who retains something childish in her face and gaze.
We won’t even know her birth name, much less what brought her to this port. But Jakob is a man who wants to understand and master what he loves. To this request, Lizzy responds tersely. Gijs Naber, who is in almost all aspects, hides nothing of the defects of his character, but we will especially remember the almost infinite love he feels for this woman that chance has put in his path. It’s all in the “almost”.
If Léa Seydoux jealously guards the mystery of Lizzy, she hides nothing, neither about her love of life nor about her desire for freedom. She would like to be free to better love the man she has chosen. In addition to the quality of the immensely inventive film writing, it is the light shed by the actress on this story that makes the beauty of my wife’s story.
my wife’s storyfilm by Ildiko Enyedi (Hong., All., It., Fr., 2021, 169 min). With Léa Seydoux, Gijs Naber, Louis Garrel, Sergio Rubini, Jasmine Trinca.
