Therese Desqueyroux TIFF 2012 Review

Posted 11 years ago by myetvmedia

Like “Madame Bovary” (Gustave Flaubert,1856), rebelling against the rules of her class and its strict Catholic morality, Thérèse Desqueyroux portrayed exquisitely by Audrey Tatou, wears a hard, grim face which keeps the mystery behind her motivations intact throughout the film. The introverted frustration boiling inside never breaks out, except in a couple of dream sequences, when she imagines jumping off the train on the way back from her honeymoon or setting fire to the already burning woods. Remarkable make-up and hairdo underline the middleclass provincialism of her character.

If there is a villain in this film, it is the bourgeois family institution, with its set of values putting property and pretense above everything else, allowing no one to escape its iron clasp. Mature audiences will respond enthusiastically like I did to Miller’s last wink at filming.

Mr. Miller’s films won many awards, including the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the French version of the Oscar, the César. Claude Miller’s mentor was François Truffaut, for whom he had worked as an assistant director and production manager before becoming a film director himself. Miller had a great sensitivity for the inner stories of beautiful, tormented women caught in circumstances beyond their control. Thérèse Desqueyroux is a deeply moving, cinematically exquisite farewell from Claude Miller.

-Christophe Chanel


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Therese Desqueyroux TIFF 2012 Review

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