In March, I was looking forward to seeing ‘La Belle Époque‘, the second and latest film by French director Nicolas Bedos, which was due to hit our local screens just in the week when the world stopped and cinemas closed. I had to postpone the meeting with that film, but I recently discovered that I had recorded his 2017 debut film in which Bedos also plays the lead role with his real life partner, Doria Tillier as his screen partner. The two are ‘Monsieur & Madame Adelman‘. He, Victor, is a famous writer, member of the French Academy and recently deceased. She, Sarah, is his fresh widow, who shares with a reporter, on the night of his funeral, the story of 45 years of love, betrayals, successes and disappointments. It is one of the films that I liked the most of all I saw lately – a romantic story, a social comedy, a critical look at the French intellectuals, a satire of racist prejudices, a feminist story but above all a sparkling and witty film, as French filmmakers know how to make when they are struck by inspiration.
The first third of the film is formidable. WOW! The old but still beautiful and elegant Mrs. Adelman remembers the love story between her, the Jewish student at the Sorbonne and the aspiring writer coming from a wealthy bourgeois family. We follow the first years of their relationship, the first books, the path searching, the failures and the successes. At one point we have the impression that we are watching a French version of ‘The Wife‘ (which was released on screens in the same year – 2017) but the French film has more. Comparing the two films with similar themes – the lifelong connection between a famous writer and his wife who is something else and more than a supporter in the shadows or a muse – I think the the French film starts from a more original point of view. Victor needs security and inspiration, Sarah helps by lending him her name and part of her identity. Once success is achieved, the confrontation with routine begins. This movie is the story of a marriage. In most marriages, the first third is the stormiest and most interesting. The same goes for ‘Monsieur & Madame Adelman‘. From a moment on, the film loses speed, even the story seems to enter into a relative routine and fails to completely avoid the clichés. The audacity of the screenwriter returns only at the end, which holds a few surprises.
Nicolas Bedos is the director, the screenwriter and also plays the lead role. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a cinema hall screening a Woody Allen movie appears at some point in the background. Woody is currently much more appreciated and influential in France than at home. Bedos borrows some cinematic elements from him, including the division of the story into titled chapters, but especially the insertion of situations and character traits that allude to his personal biography. Doria Tillier, the screen partner is also the director’s life partner, and as spectators we can ask ourselves how much the two bring to the screen from their real life relationship. They both play very well in a story that spans almost the entire history of the 5th French Republic in the post-De Gaulle period, from Pompidou to 2016. They certainly gave a lot of work to makeup artists and hairdressers, but the result is almost perfect. The Parisian intellectual environment with its snobbery and rivalities is excellently presented, with ironic arrows at some of the sacred monsters of French literature and culture, including Jack Lang in a cameo appearance in which the former minister plays his own role as a speaker at funerals of the members of the French Academy. The feeling of authenticity is accentuated by the use of television reports of the time, documenting changes of regime and personalities at the helm of France. ‘Monsieur & Madame Adelman‘ manages to be at the same time sincere and sophisticated, witty and critical, comic and moving. Judging by this debut, Nicolas Bedos is one of the most promising filmmakers of the generation of French filmmakers which is now reaching adulthood.