Slant Magazine

DVD  REVIEW

L'Important C'est D'aimer
****

by Jeremiah Kipp on July 8, 2009
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Love, as defined by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, is a careening struggle of misplaced desire, a doomed loyalty that's trapped on a death march into the abyss, or a self-obliteration to let the person you care for go free. The love is epic in magnitude as characters throw themselves wholeheartedly into their doomed romantic mission. But in the world of Żuławski, we're not in the realm of sentimentality; love is violent and obsessive and all-encompassing. L'Important C'est D'Aimer stalks its characters with the director's endlessly roving handheld camera, lurching through their Parisian apartments lined with bookshelves and into restaurants where glasses of wine and cups of coffee are thrown to the floor. In other words, this is a fantastic date movie if you're with the right company, meaning intellectually rigorous and emotionally charged.

With Żuławski, frequently accused of being overwrought, there's never a dull moment. The love triangle between a brooding photographer (Fabio Testi), a struggling actress (the sublime Romy Schneider), and her ridiculous, cheerfully self-loathing husband (Jacques Dutronc) is set within an absurd world of pediatric gangsters, sleazy porn merchants, suicidal clowns, theater queens, and in a casting coup that fits perfectly within the milieu, madman Klaus Kinski as a debonair thespian raging his way through the on-stage role of Richard III, though this mercurial actor's most explosive moment happens off-stage in his response to a negative press review. He picks a fistfight with two smarmy bourgeois onlookers, smashing their faces into the walls and floor before absconding with their tart girlfriends for the night. "You're crazy," someone tells him a few scenes later, and Kinski's character delightfully responds, "No, I'm rich!"

What sounds like an over-the-top Euro-art psychodrama is actually, by Żuławski standards, quite restrained. Most of the time, the characters aren't verbally and physically laying siege on one another—as they do for the entire running time of the anarchic 1972 period film The Devil and his 1981 horror film Possession. They are accompanied by a lush orchestral score by Georges Delereu, who also composed the themes for Godard's Contempt. There are close-ups of our central characters in moments of luminous stillness, such as an early moment of soul-encroaching vulnerability where Schneider, lying on the floor ready to shoot a scene in a Z-grade softcore porn film, whispers to Testi, "No photographs please…"

She is given the opportunity to act as Lady Anne opposite Kinski's Richard III, and when her nerves get the best of her and she flees from the theater, she is pursued by Werner Herzog's best friend. Who would have thought the most tender scene would belong to Kinski? As he comforts her with a gentle kiss, he not only compliments her beauty but, in a poetic gesture, states he would give anything to resemble her instead of being cursed with his own ugly, freakish form. When the photographer shows up to also provide comfort to the woman for whom he's fallen head over heels, Kinski contemptuously dismisses him with an indifferent flick of his hand.

Always drawing career-high performances from his leading actresses, Żuławski has been hailed as a George Cukor of demented cinema. Schneider, who embodies the very heart of this film, may deliver a performance that tops even Isabelle Adjani's wide-eyed, operatically shrieking madwoman in Possession. While Schneider's face is a document of what hard living can do to ethereal beauty, Żuławski caught her at exactly the right moment in her career. She was no longer a thriving young starlet, and while still a European icon with a glowing on-screen presence, there's just the very start of wear on her face.

Those signs of life experience on Schneider's perfect face form a kind of map, and while she's still gorgeous, she's also warped. There's something twisted inside her, buried incredibly deep underneath that lovely façade. The Cukor comparison is apt, since it's almost like watching Judy Garland during those middle years where she could no longer hide from her own true nature. And to her credit, Schneider makes no attempt to; it's a fearless performance not because she gets naked, in the figurative sense (the nudity is, in fact, quite chaste), but because she allows herself to be so vulnerable on screen, as if we can see every nerve ending, and the dignity it takes for a cracked-up woman to attempt working through her mania.

Image/Sound:

The spectacular looking digitally restored transfer of the film is rich in color and detail, and the soundscape beautifully preserves the score by Georges Delerue, balancing it nicely with the dialogue. The film looks and sounds stunning, as if it were made yesterday.

Extras:

Andrzej Żuławski's audio commentary with film writer Daniel Bird as moderator is both informative and darkly comic-as the Polish director defends the concept of suicide as a heroic choice, happily quotes Dustin Hoffman's line "This is nothing!" from Wag the Dog during a scene where the hero takes a bloody beating, and asks his British colleague if there's any difference between photographing an orgy or shooting the queen ("I won't answer that," is Bird's wry response). But he also describes how he arrived in France from Poland after his films were banned, his struggles with the producers to secure Klaus Kinski's participation in the film (after Kinski had punched one of them in the face and called him a Nazi!), and his dismay at having to cut out two of his favorite scenes, which he vividly describes. A 15-minute interview with Żuławski describes his adaptation of a richly philosophical novel to the screen, how the film acquired its title, and brief anecdotes about his work with the actors, particularly Schneider, who was nervous about playing a role her own age after she hit 30. Rounding out the special features are several stills and behind-the-scenes photographs, a theatrical trailer, and a 24-page essay by Bird that delves into Żuławski's student years in France studying filmmaking, philosophy, and political science, as well as his post-Poland years as an uncredited script doctor on French movies. There's also a vivid and unpretentious analysis of the film, in which Bird says, "All may be fair in love and war, but here love is filmed as was, with the camera chasing emotionally battered lovers as if it were the D-Day landings."

Overall:

The second Żuławski film put out by Mondo Video maintains their impeccable standards of quality, and it's great to see this underappreciated international auteur receive such a handsome DVD package for one of his finest films.

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• Director(s): Andrzej Żuławski
• Screenplay: Christopher Frank, Andrzej Żuławski
• Cast: Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, Jacques Dutronc, Roger Blin, Klaus Kinski
• Distributor: Mondo Vision
• Street Date: June 16, 2009
• Runtime: 109 min.
• Rating: R
• Year: 1975

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