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UN COEUR EN HIVER (A HEART IN WINTER) (1992)
Directed by: Claude Sautet.
Written by Jacques Fieschi, Claude Sautet, & Jérôme Tonnerre.
Produced by: Philippe Carcassone & Jean-Louis Livi.
Director of Photography: Yves Angelo.
Edited by: Jacqueline Thiédot.
Released by: Koch Lorber.
Language: French with English Subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 101 Minutes. Not Rated.
With: Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart, & André Dussollier.
DVD Features: All with English subtitles: Excerpt from Claude Sautet’s interview in the documentary Claude Sautet ou la magie invisible. French TV interviews with Sautet & André Dussollier. Essay by Michel Boujut. French trailer.

Two people sitting around a café talking abstractly about love can be engrossing, as Eric Rohmer has demonstrated many times. Unfortunately, Claude Sautet, in one of his last films, reinforces the stereotype of an old Mike Nichols and Elaine May comedy sketch skewering pretentiously intellectual French films.

The opening sets up the formally compatible partnership between meticulous craftsmen Stephane (Daniel Auteuil) and the charming Maxime (André Dussollier), expert violin makers and repairers. Over wine and espresso, Maxime suddenly announces to Stephane he has found the love of his life and is leaving his unseen wife for the much younger and beautiful violinist Camille (Emmanuelle Béart), who he introduces to his colleague. Her passionate playing of Ravel and Debussy provides the undercurrent of unexpressed emotions throughout the film, as the ostensible love triangle that results has no chemistry otherwise. One advantage of viewing the beautiful looking film on DVD is the ability to click on scene selections to see if you can find where it is exactly that Stephane seduces her, as she claims in the film's only lively, emotional-laden confrontation. She’s flattered every time he comes to listen to her perform so intently, but the total lack of action on his part only feeds her attraction, not to mention she may have a daddy fixation.

In the DVD interviews extras, Sautet explains that the contemporary film was inspired by a story in the 19th century Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov’s collection A Hero of Our Time, but the emotionally stunted characters could be out of Henry James. Both Sautet and Dussollier reiterate Stephane’s obvious problems, with the director comparing Stephane to Shakespeare’s scheming Iago. And like that character, the audience still has zero idea of Stephane’s motivations or background at all. He is simply a manipulator, straining Camille and Maxine’s relationship. Nora Lee Mandel
November 8, 2006