Review of Tous les matins du monde

First let me say that I am typically very favorable on historical drama in general and music history in particular--The Red Viloin, Farinelli, Topsy-Turvy, Amadeus--fine pictures all, in their own ways. Tous Les Matins du Monde begins auspiciously, and unfolds with such grace and skill that for the first half, at least, one is easily given over to the assumption of being gratefully ensconced in a wise and perceptive story of loss, love, and art. Few films set in the 17th century are as evocative of the period; the music itself is transcendent; and there are moments and genuine epiphany, even if they are a bit more intellectual than emotional. But Tous Les Matins du Monde turns out to be a crafty deceit, one that I find to be so terribly, typically French: the notion that suffering itself connotes importance, that joy is for wimps, and that redemption is embodied in art alone (i.e. the sublime expression of suffering). This is a bit like the notion that being cynical is the same as being smart. It looks a lot like truth, but when you scratch the surface you find only a lazy potential for real insight. Such is the unfortunate scope of Tous Les Matins du Monde. By the last third of the picture, one begins to realize that it has nothing very much more to say than what it had been offering all along. That's not a story, it's a premise. It's a good thing the music contains so much range of emotion, because everything else in the picture is striking a single note. The perfunctory and somewhat ridiculous intellectual exchange at the end about the "answer" to what music is only serves to emphasize the limitations of the exercise. In true French fashion, the pretense of gravity is meant to be taken for the real thing.