I had forgotten that « Ma saison préférée » was not an Éric Rohmer film, a perhaps understandable error given this latter's « Contes des quatre saisons » and the fact that the real director, André Téchiné, was heavily influenced by the Nouvelle Vague. There is a definitive Rohmerian streak to this work: the Catholic Church in the distant background of people's lives, there when they are ready to come back to her; the corrupted nature of man and his ability to do the right thing in the end even after damage has been done; the tension between the ancient and the modern, and so on. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that this film gives deliberate nods to each of the four major Rohmer collections.
Daniel Auteuil has become, in my mind, a seriously overused actor, but he shines here as the emotionally unstable Antoine, who's not quite sure how to relate to his older sister or to anyone else for that matter. Emilie, the sister, possesses all the grace and class of Deneuve despite her simple countryside upbringing - their mother Berthe never even learned how to read. Like nearly all those born between the outbreaks of the two world wars, Berthe and he husband wanted their children to move up in the world, and in their minds, this meant their children had to become "modern."
And modern they are, but at what a price. Throughout the film we watch how "modernization" destabilized the normative familial relations of this family in the generation of Antoine and Emilie and how it haunts them in their adult lives: Emilie's ambiguity as to how to deal with her brother very nearly destroys her marriage and her own nuclear family. Berthe, for her part, comes to see how her struggle to raise "modern" children has served only to drift them away from her... right at the moment when she most needs and wants them.
Other focal points of ambiguity and gloom include Emily's and Bruno's adopted son, who is obviously uneasy with having been inserted into a ready-made family, as though the ancient primordial order could be manipulated and reconstructed at will. The ambiguities of modernity are never resolved, but the film manages to avoid descending into a postmodern diatribe and gives a ray of hope, suggesting that, with a little effort to remember the good, life can perhaps move forward in a more primordially "normal" manner.
Daniel Auteuil has become, in my mind, a seriously overused actor, but he shines here as the emotionally unstable Antoine, who's not quite sure how to relate to his older sister or to anyone else for that matter. Emilie, the sister, possesses all the grace and class of Deneuve despite her simple countryside upbringing - their mother Berthe never even learned how to read. Like nearly all those born between the outbreaks of the two world wars, Berthe and he husband wanted their children to move up in the world, and in their minds, this meant their children had to become "modern."
And modern they are, but at what a price. Throughout the film we watch how "modernization" destabilized the normative familial relations of this family in the generation of Antoine and Emilie and how it haunts them in their adult lives: Emilie's ambiguity as to how to deal with her brother very nearly destroys her marriage and her own nuclear family. Berthe, for her part, comes to see how her struggle to raise "modern" children has served only to drift them away from her... right at the moment when she most needs and wants them.
Other focal points of ambiguity and gloom include Emily's and Bruno's adopted son, who is obviously uneasy with having been inserted into a ready-made family, as though the ancient primordial order could be manipulated and reconstructed at will. The ambiguities of modernity are never resolved, but the film manages to avoid descending into a postmodern diatribe and gives a ray of hope, suggesting that, with a little effort to remember the good, life can perhaps move forward in a more primordially "normal" manner.