Review of A Man and a Woman (1966) by Veronique K — 29 Apr 2009

"un homme et une femme"(a man and a woman) is one of the popular french new wave movies which had swept over america with its monpoly on the market of foreign cinema then in 1966.

The intertextuality of the synchronized events in various field is my usual thinking mode, the approach new wave applies on non-linear story-telling is highly influenced by the rising popularity of french new-novel like margret duras. the theory is to dissect the fragments of living events then sew them up together spontaneously as the protagonist's freewheeling minds lead. so you witness one segment of past or the envisage of future jumps to the present as our mind usually reels randomly into various visceral images at one moment. you could deem it as the deficiency of attention focus or lack of concentration, but the course of sentimentaity and human emotions are inclined to occur more often in this way since distractions've become more of common symptom due to the contagion of media.

The most frequent set in "un homme et une femme" is within the car when the leads are chattering about each other, but you cannot really grasp too much within the conversations but the rampant images conjured up by the leads as they utter their tales of life. rather than dialogue-driven, it's prompted mainly by visionary scenes, intermittent narrations there from the man to speak of his mind and his motivations and hesitations on certain actions of his, but never the woman's? woman here stays as the enigmatic muse for the man to covet just like the conventional state of genders. (so it cannot be a sentimental chic flick but a romantic male-centered movie about a man's infatuation over a woman,).

For audience like me who watches too many american or anglophilic films may find it a slackening dozer but still somehow refreshed by such novelty of story-telling, at least it is faithful to its simplicity without over-flaunting the new-wave expertises to over-complicate the matters. the soundtrack is dreamily metropolitan and the views of those locations seem to be idyllic to demonstrate those ordinary but lovely sceneries in france like mobile postcards. boredom may strike you during watching it, but it gives you a hearty smile at the final 15 mins with a reasonable twist like the miracle most people in love would pray for.

The notably creative scene would probably be two leads making love when the woman thinks of the memories of intimacy with her demised husband that leaves the man cold as his partner's mind drifts over somewhere else, and the lady's comment is simply "i never lie to you that he's dead but he still lives in my heart"..such frastrating honesty. there's no melodrama but brief moments of life's absurdity in a realistic way. also there's nothing too intense or provocatively passionate about "un homme et une femme" but those possible scenarios which might happen to some of us who have the bless to fall in love.

(ps) my best advice would be listening to the soundtrack, as the director claims that he chose the music for the story he wrote first then everything else was built along the moods of melodies. indeed the soundtrack of "un homme et une femme" is probably one of the best in cinematic history, without it the movie could be a complete bore.