L'Amour Braque - (Mad Love) - 1985
Directed by Andrzej Żuławski
Written by Etienne Roda-Gil & Andrzej Żuławski
Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot"
Starring Sophie Marceau, Francis Huster
& Tchéky Karyo
I nearly had to reconfigure my entire mind to see
L'Amour braque in a way where I'd accept it, and be at peace with the fact that some of it will forever be incomprehensible to me. I'm not talking about appreciating it artistically, or understanding it's plot - I'm talking about certain uses of French slang, culture and literary references I know nothing about that swirl around in a jumble of poetry and style. They come whirling out in an explosive rattling of dialogue, and once every so often leave me completely mystified. There are degrees of mystification however, and after a while I came to appreciate the poetic meaning of certain passages, where we feel more than understand. That's to say, I can never really be sure if I
am missing something - confusion can be the point, and at times I may be sensing a deeper meaning that isn't there, and many parts aren't
meant to be understood in a straightforward manner.
Here is the cinema landscape of Andrzej Żuławski. An unnatural manic energy is unleashed in all the characters of
L'Amour braque, and they will not only never stand still - they'll throw their limbs about, jump, shake, twirl, kick, bite, punch, slap, spit, hug and dance. Their explosive never-ending energy is inexhaustible and total. They'll shout their lines, scream their lines and sing their lines. They'll spit their lines while jumping, dance, scream, fall over and jump up again. When I encountered this, before I knew what to expect, I was completely exhausted within 15 minutes - a kind of empathetic reaction for the actors in the film, who I knew could rest in-between takes but nevertheless seemed raw and covered in sweat. I also couldn't understand the meaning. Why the mania? I felt as if I were watching a vision of Paris where every person in it had been rendered completely insane. I've stopped trying to think of a reason - perhaps because in doing so I might be missing the point.
Film historian Kat Ellinger admits that this is "one of the things that puts people off Żuławski films. This deliberate level of artifice - an almost theatrical way of stylizing the film" - an admission she makes as a fan of his films - saying it "catches people off guard", and that's certainly what it did to me. With this energy comes dialogue which is often cryptic, lyrical, nonsensical, humerous and/or powerful, and it's at a fast pace - a little too fast for me the first time I viewed the film, which meant that the plot, as simple as it is, was completely lost on me as well. I did consider that the film simply didn't have a plot, but it does - it's one that's loosely based on Dostoevsky novel
The Idiot. On a train to Paris a group of hoodlums are evading the police after staging a bank robbery. The leader of the gang, Micky (Tchéky Karyo), meets a simple immigrant from Hungary, Léon (Francis Huster) and befriends him. Micky is on his way to rescue (or buy) a hooker he's fallen in love with, Mary (Sophie Marceau), who belongs to the fearsome Venin brothers. When Mary meets Léon she falls in love with him, which means that after Micky has dealt with all the Venin brothers a reckoning will be due this love triangle.
Léon is immigrating and some of his family already live in Paris - his mother's sister's daughter (as he puts it) is an actress and movie star. They're involved/appearing in a production of
The Seagull on stage, and it seems as if one of the Venin brothers is a patron of the arts involved with it - something which provides another connection between two arcs of the story. This is also the source of another love interest for Léon - which adds another love triangle to proceedings. As Micky continues to assassinate the Venins the story of how Mary came to belong to them is uncovered - and the fate of Mary's mother is unveiled when a secret video is unearthed, which tells us that beyond being freed, vengeance is also on the table as far as she is concerned. The film's final few scenes are completely given over to surreal metaphor, but by this time the crossover feels like a natural component of the film - the dialogue was metaphorical from the very get-go, so for the action to diverge from naturalism almost makes everything more explicable.
In this film Sophie Marceau managed to break out of her recurring role of sweet innocent young French sweetheart into a more sexually charged woman with greater range. In all actuality she ended up in a relationship with Andrzej Żuławski that lasted 16 years, and she was to appear in more of his films. She auditioned for the role of Mary, but completely froze when the audition commenced, and it was this stricken anxiety that convinced Żuławski to give her the part - he offered it to her before she could even break out of her mind-lock. Her part and her performance are the two things to really take away from
L'Amour braque - although many performances in the film are slightly clouded by the sheer exuberant energy expelled by every cast member. It's with Sophie that we get the complexity and range of emotions that befit someone who has had a truly traumatic past, and there's something genuine we feel underneath all of the movement. A quiet dignity that Żuławski allows her to have.
The film has an interesting look - the costumes the gangsters wear have a particularly 80s gaudy
Scarface kind of vibe, and many scenes filmed by French cinematographer Jean-François Robin are from extremely low angles, giving the settings the particular "where God would live" massive overbearing immensity that Żuławski was demanding from him. The colour and lighting scheme is very deliberately projecting the mood and intensity of the moment. Robin had never worked with Żuławski before, and found the entire experience unique and fascinating - not only in a visual sense, but in the way Żuławski would push his actors, lashing out at them not in particular dissatisfaction but to try and push them to give their absolute best performance. The director of photography would also be challenged by the sheer amount of movement and speed of the action (at times it must have felt like shooting a musical), and was impressed by the way Żuławski would deliberately fill the background of shots when close-ups of the actors were called for.
Although the script was always being reworked and changed, an interesting written contribution to the film comes from French lyricist and anarchist Étienne Roda-Gil, the only screenwriting credit he ever had. We can perhaps sense that much of the lyrical and poetic dialogue comes from him - and there is a sharp political edge to many of the lines that come from a variety of the characters. The gangsters constantly disparage France's political and financial elite, who they see as arms dealers and oligarchs. Anton Chekhov's play
The Seagull and Dostoevsky's
The Idiot gives an added aura of sociological and existential concern that strongly influence much of what comes from all the characters in the film. Żuławski wasn't the kind of director to just see what happened once the cameras had started rolling, so his exactitude points to his film being a fairly complex and choreographed work that belies what at times looks simply silly. It does bring me back to what Kat Ellinger was saying about this "not being one of Żuławski's most accessible films." People were always going to have some trouble with it - and that extended to most critics at the time it was released.
In the meantime, as far as scoring is concerned, Stanislas Syrewicz provides the film with a very synthesized, eighties kind of feel to proceedings when things become intense, but shifts with the mood and feel of the film as time goes by. The imposition of frenzied passionate dialogue during "Voudras, Quand Tu Voudras" gives an added sense of how emotionally wrenching Mary's arc of the story really is. Overall though, this isn't a movie that confines itself forever to looking like a cultural artifact from that time period, despite the score and costumes. Instead, it exists very much apart from any specific era just because of it's unique style and theatrical sensibility. Time has been kind, with many reviewers for various film media lending a much more approving eye to
L'Amour Braque than they did back when it was released, although as far as the average filmgoer is concerned anger and confusion come to the fore half the time.
Personally, for me,
L'Amour Braque has had to overcome an initial impulse I had to reject it outright. I had to watch it again, this time fully aware of the kind of film it was, and can honestly say that this is the kind of movie where I'll notice something different every time I watch it - there is more going on here than I can take in and process all at once. Every impulse the mind can have transmits itself outwardly through the people who populate Żuławski's world, and nothing is inhibited - which can overload me unless I psychologically filter what I'm seeing and hearing. It's a double edged sword, because while it's nice to have an abundance of detail and significance to intrigue the mind it's sometimes at the expense of simple beauty. While energy and movement can make sure something is never dull, stillness and tranquility can at leave give a sense of contrast to the violent and fluid. If I see someone laughing really loudly I deduce that they're happy, if I see someone laughing really loud for an hour without stopping, I deduce that they're crazy. Perhaps that's the whole point of
Mad Love - that love is insanity, that life is insanity and perhaps our very existence is insanity. But I really suspect that the whole point of this film is complex and voluminous and will be forever beyond my grasp.