Cinema
Gamesmanship
Peter Ackroyd
L'Amour Par Terre ('15', selected cinemas) C ometimes on Sunday evenings' (or so we are told) a small group of people tread softly into a Paris flat where they act as spectators in a domestic drama. That drama is of a classic sort: a man is cheating on his wife, who then unexpectedly returns home; and all the while the group of spectators, apparently unseen by the pro- tagonists, whisper to each other and some- times laugh. Then it becomes clear that the protagonists are themselves playing a part - this is not street theatre but apartment theatre, in which the actors turn their real lives into the material of drama.
It is an intriguing idea, even if in the past there have been similar attempts to explore that area where artifice and reality are confused. As an exercise in fooling the cinema audience, however, it is sufficiently entertaining and, for those who are in- terested in such matters, there is no doubt that there is a sharp enough intelligence behind it. In fact a chilling Gallic clarity pervades everything, so that the film is perhaps most noticeable for its schematic quality - still, there is something uniquely satisfying about a film which threatens to become entirely `tinwatchable', as the general public might put it, but never actually is so. Of course we would not want it to be done too often but there is very little danger of that, even in France. And in any case L' Amour Par Terre is also characterised by a whimsical charm which is, as it were, the lighter side of French intellectualism.
The film proceeds as follows: the actors who stage these domestic dramas are in- vited to a playwright's mansion, where at once they find themselves involved in a
'living theatre' which surpasses anything they have created for themselves. TheY wander around the house in search of their author (no doubt the echoes of Pirandello are deliberate even if they are not entirelY appropriate) and, as is always the case with such plots, their theatrical roles become fatally compromised by their daily lives - or is it vice versa? More importantly, however, they become involved in the drama which the playwright has made out of his own life. Who is still with me at this point? The problem with explaining such a complicated narrative is that I feel as if I am turning into part of the film; as one actress says at a bewildering turn in the plot, 'I no longer know who I am or what! am doing' - a mystification which, at this point, is shared by the cinema audience itself. The only thing to do is to lie back and let it all happen; the point, if there is one, will emerge eventually and the ending is as agreeable as it is unexpected. If the film is not entirely successful, it is because it is not entirely a film; the voices here have an echoic quality which suggests a stage set, while the gestures and con- versations are somewhat too theatrical even for the purposes of the plot. I suspect that this is the effect which the director, Jacques Rivette, always has upon his mat- erial since his work seems to be largelY literary or dramatic in inspiration. Unlike Jean Luc Godard, who has dealt with verY similar themes, Rivette's imagination seems somehow to be at one remove from the cinema and has therefore to be im- posed upon it. As a result the film is elaborate but funny in a slightly mannered way - and, given the fact that not much can be said t? happen, the performers manage very We" indeed. Someone once claimed that the art of acting is essentially the art of reacting - certainly there is a lot of that here, as the narrative dips into the rag-bag where, varous theories about 'roles' and 'masks are kept. Even the English actors involved, Jane Birkin and Geraldine Chaplin, enter the spirit of the occasion - in Geraldine Chaplin's case, at least, to some effect since she has for the first time given, sufficient scope to the inalienable ha' attractive silliness of her personality. The French all looked extremely French dapper and lugubrious, with a hint (11 salacity. Jean-Pierre Kalfon, aS the PlaY., wright, gave a colourful if sketchy portral of an author for whom nothing exists Ufl he has personally written it down. His work is described thus: 'It's photo- graphy, not theatre . . . touched up, like a painting.' And that is a rather good de' scription of the film itself which was flat r method but colourful in detail, plain in 1,r5 intent but vigorous in its execution. All la all, it is a perfectly good, tight-lipped comedy - although I have to admit that i could only really recommend it to thos2 who already have an interest in sue." matters, and who believe that the cinema 15 also capable of affording something gener ally described as 'intellectual pleasure'.
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