Directed by Oliver Assayas, 2000, with Charles Berling, Emmanuelle Béart, Isabelle Huppert.
Available on DVD
Seeing this long film a second time recently, I wondered what this film was really about. Was it a family saga? Was it about the fate of the pottery industry in Limoges? The story of a man who made mistakes? A portrait of a massive identification? Or…….. a film about war??
The story spans several decades, from 1900. Unforgettable is the moment when everything stops- all the church bells, everywhere, are ringing. There was barely a hint that there might be a war. But suddenly.... all lives are changed.
Of the war itself, we see little- men leave, but we see no fighting, just some scenes from a military hospital with gunfire in the distance, someone coming on leave, someone returning brutalized, barely able to speak of what he had witnessed. The world afterwards is not the same world.