Un Coeur En Hiver

The Film

Despite a career in films going back to the 1950s, Claude Sautet saved his best films for the very end of his life. Claude Sautet's penultimate, and best, film is an elegant story of frigid love which was inspired by a Lermontov short story. Un Coeur En Hiver is a beautifully composed, produced, and acted piece that could only have come from France. Ostensibly a ménage a trois between the three leads, the film concentrates its lens on the central character of Stephane. Stephane is a once talented young musician who has retreated as an adult into the role of a violin maker. Quiet, efficient, and unemotional, he has learnt to protect himself from the vicissitudes of life by maintaining an ironic distance. His separation from others has become so complete that he has grown to believe his own harsh words, and he enjoys the world much as a game he plays with others. He likes predicting other's failures and passively encouraging their views of him as either deep or difficult. He sees friendships as mutually useful Kantian entities, and consequently he disdains the feelings that others have for him. He even rejects the camaraderie of his business partner, Maxime, whom he has known for years, to prove how unaffected he is by common feeling. Stephane claims that beauty and love are for dreams and that the real world soils them; he can only enjoy these notions as literature or music. In his efforts to prove his self sufficiency, Stephane allows no one to move him and his ego as his only motivation. Eventually Stephane's vanity leads him to the realisation that “The only one I destroy is myself”.
Stephane is a character who protects himself by denying his feelings and the moral of his story is that the misfortunes of the heart humble even the aloof. He learns the emptiness of his pride through his own attempts at manipulation and in watching the failing example of his frail mentor whom he had seen as a role model. He discovers the pain that his callousness has caused and realises the harm he does himself by alienating others. Brought into conflict with Stephane is Camille, a young violinist who at first abandons her reserve and learns a lesson of her own. Camille is intense, serious, and in control until she falls for Stephane. She learns the harsh lesson of abandoning herself to an invulnerable, unarticulated love. Her humiliation by Stephane leads her to a greater reserve and to begin to protect herself much as he does -”I am the empty one now”. It seems redundant and obvious to mention Emmanuelle Beart's beauty, but here it is deployed potently alongside her formidable acting ability. Beart convinces as a musician because she learned how to play the violin for the role, but she also succeeds as a buttoned-up naive young woman, as a vengeful lover, and finally as someone aged beyond her years. The scene where she confronts Stephane in the restaurant demonstrates a rare power which is equal parts emotional whirlwind and romantic refugee. She is Stephane's worst nightmare, a part of the real world that refuses to be explained away or to disappear without an impact. Beart has been brilliant in other films like Chabrol's L'Enfer but she has never been as exhilarating as in this film. There is one moment during a rehearsal where a despondent Camille looks into desolate space which is as beautifully sad an image as you will ever see. Daniel Auteuil as Stephane is excellent, being all sly looks and minimal gestures. He portrays urbane cruelty, bafflement at the consequences he reaps, and a final difficult humility. He gives the character a razor sharp intellect and a virtually unshakeable poker face. Andre Dussollier does well with his difficult role as Maxime and gives his usual reserved performance of quiet wisdom with a hint of sleaze. The other leading character in the film is the music of Maurice Ravel which is perfect for this tale of repression and passion. At times the score is almost mathematical in its rigour, and at other times the emotion bursts free. This tension of passion and control is at the centre of the film as Sautet creates a world of many conflicts. This is further reinforced by the contrast between the perfect composition of the photography and some of the cruelty of the relationships. Similarly the comfortable world of bourgeois musicians is undermined by great personal pain.

Sautet's success is not elaborate or complicated, it is merely to tell a tale of modern lives and to succeed in plainly reaching the viewer's empathy. The film is a chamber piece which allows its characters' relationships to become analogous to the greater world. There is a great truth here that, even as our lives are simplified and made more comfortable by wealth and progress, we become more cynical, more protective, and more discouraging to honesty of the heart. This coldness is not simply Stephane's, it becomes Camille's and, Sautet suggests, that of the whole world. The film ends with a little solace, but perhaps love has died in our world because the proud deny it and the naive grow up too soon.

Un Coeur En Hiver is a gem.

The Disc
In a welcome change, Koch Lorber present the film with a newly restored high definition anamorphic transfer. Given some of the poor transfers they have released previously, the treatment here is to be applauded. The transfer of the film is very sharp and captures the slightly subdued look of the film well without it seeming too dark or colourless, it does seem some colour and contrast boosting has occurred. There is minimal noise in the transfer and this knocks the previously grainy R2 Second Sight release out of the park. The icing on the cake visually is that the film is also in the original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Given the film was transferred under the eyes of the films' DP, Yves Angelo, I suppose the product is unsurprisingly good. Soundwise this is 95% perfect with music and dialogue never sounding anything other than clear and dynamic. There are two mixes, a mono track and a surround track, but no option for the original stereo mix. The tracks are well restored and you will struggle to hear any distortion or soundtrack noise. However there is two large buts. Firstly, the audio as the film moves into the closing titles sounds stretched to me and this effect is especially disturbing in the surround track. My final criticism is that of the new translation given to the subtitles. Remembering the film from its theatrical release and the R2 disc there are some crucial lines which are translated differently and in my opinion less effectively. In the R2 version Stephane's almost penitent line "je n'arrive pas", literally I don't get there, is translated as "I always get there too late", whereas here it becomes "I never manage..." - the R2 translation seems closer to the sense of the dialogue and the emotional core of the film rather than the prosaic fumbling for words suggested by the R1 disc.

The extras include some French TV interviews with Sautet and Dussollier. Sautet is an agreeable interviewee who seems content to accept his interviewers views on his work, but he does look as if he is co-operating so he isn't tortured too long. He agrees that the film portrays a world where men have learnt to avoid feeling and that women find themselves punished by their search for true emotion. Dussollier's piece is a hotel room junket interview and short and uneventful. Sautet is interviewed again about his previous film, A Few Days With Me, and talks about that film, this film, and Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud being a trilogy of sorts. Sautet discusses Auteuil and Beart during this interview but there is very little said about Un Coeur En Hiver, it feels like a largely irrelevant extra. There is an excerpt from a documentary on Sautet where colleagues praise and discuss this film as his best and reveal the preparation for the film such as Beart's year long violin training. The extras on the disc are completed by the original French trailer. The final extra is a very short piece by critic Michel Boujut about Sautet which is included in the small insert that comes with the disc. There are no stunning insights in the piece but some background on Sautet's influences and intentions in film making. Overall, the extras give an impression of a film maker who was a modest man and whose intention was to produce strong dramatic films with great human insight. Summary
If you live in my house then this is one of the greatest of modern French films, but I believe that fans of strong dramatic world cinema will lap this release up as well. The feature presentation is fine up until the sound issue over the closing titles, and the extras mean that the existing R2 release will seem redundant. If you are as difficult to please as myself you might like to check out the existing R4 release to see if the sound is handled better and the subtitles improved, but Koch Lorber have done well here and this is very acceptable.