Review of Cesar and Rosalie (1972) by Tonypolito — 14 Nov 2010

A French film about a love triangle - imagine that!

A middle-aged suit & tie type of man (Montand) and his attractive and slightly younger lover (Schneider) seem content in their bourgeois Paris lifestyle, built off the buying and selling of salvage. In fact, five years earlier, Montand picked up Schneider for a bargain price off the scrap heap when her Bohemian artist boy friend (Frey) dumped her and skipped town.

Now Frey's back and Schneider's all too ready to forgo Montand and the wonderful life he's provided. Montand becomes morose, lost, confused and prone to fits of rage and violence. Something's got to give - and director Sautet reels off about 90 minutes of film teasing the viewer along regarding what that something will be.

If this plotline set-up sounds just too similar to Adrian Lynn's "Unfaithful" (2002) to be coincidence, there's good reason. "Unfaithful" is based on Chabrol's "La Femme Infidele" (1969), a film only three years younger than this one - and one that Sautet surely knew all too well.

The difference is that Chabrol, as most of the French New Wave directors, criticized the French bourgeois as shallow, complacent and hypocritical, while Sautet was far more sympathetic to their plight. So this film is essentially Sautet's rejoinder to "Unfaithful.".

This film is not anywhere near as engaging as Sautet's excellent, highly recommended later works "Un Coeur en Hiver" and "Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud.".

Here in this film, the viewer is forced to watch Schneider callously "try on" first one of the two men for fit, then the other, over and over, as though she were at a Macy's shoe sale. There's not much cause for sympathy in that.

RECOMMENDATION: Only for genre completists.