Le beau mariage (A Good Marriage)

The heroine, Sabine (played by Béatrice Romand, who as a 16-year-old tried to seduce Jean-Claude Brialy in Le Genou de Claire) is a young woman from the provinces who works in an antique shop in Le Mans whilst also working on her art history thesis. She is fed up with having affairs with married men in which there is no future for her. In the film’s opening scene, she angrily gets out of bed at her lover’s house—he is a painter (Féodor Atkine)—and calls out to him, half provocatively and half impulsively: “Je vais me marier.”

A little later, at a wedding reception, she meets a thirty-five-year-old lawyer, Edmond (André Dussollier). Their tête-à-tête does not last long, as he is called back to Paris by an urgent phone call. Yet she is firmly convinced that something “magical” has happened between them; in that conviction she is further strengthened by her friend and confidante Clarisse (Arielle Dombasle). Sabine posits that the lawyer, a wealthy Parisian, can lift her out of her provincial middle-class existence. The problem, however, is that her supposed husband resolutely refuses to behave as she has mapped out in her strategy, forcing her to endure a series of defeats, disappointments and humiliations.

You really do have to be Eric Rohmer to weave a film around such a premise that is nothing but finesse and elegance. The heroine constantly teeters on the brink of the ridiculous; she is funny, at once irritating and endearing, but never laughable. The director does not look down on her, yet neither does he conceal the absurdity of her scheming, which takes no account of whether the other person is actually willing to share her dreams. Rohmer clearly admires the risks she dares to take and the courage with which she pursues her idée fixe to the very end.

Rohmer’s modernity lies precisely in the fact that he does not do what was expected of a filmmaker of his time, just as his heroine does not behave as befits a contemporary young woman. As a devout Catholic, Rohmer even has her praying in church for her dream – “Je veux qu’il me désire” – to come true. Whilst her mother points out that it is the norm for young people to live together first and only then think of marriage, Sabine sees so many failed marriages around her of people who did live together first. Why not try it the other way round?

Rohmer does not moralise, yet he is a self-proclaimed moralist. He himself said on the subject: “I use the term moralist in the sense it was given in the seventeenth century, someone who describes sentimental stirrings but does not pass judgement himself.”
To describe Rohmer as a reactionary, therefore, seems to me an overly simplistic solution. A maverick who goes his own way undisturbed seems a more accurate characterisation. Time-bound concepts such as ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ are, incidentally, of little relevance here. Le Beau Mariage is neither a psychological nor a sociological study, but rather a particularly playful film full of underlying seriousness, or a very serious film full of secret frivolity.

Like many of Rohmer’s heroes, Sabine navigates between conformism and creative urge, between stability and adventure, and attempts in a radical way to drag another person into her egocentric preoccupations. Unlike in films such as Le Genou de Claire or La Femme de l’aviateur, the performances in Le Beau Mariage are not characterised by a pronounced naturalism, but cultivate a somewhat unstable theatricality, as if the actors do not fully embrace their characters. As always with Rohmer, the characters are firmly rooted in their social milieu, here the petit bourgeoisie of old Le Mans, a world of commerce and crafts.
In Le Beau Mariage, every image, every camera movement, every shot and reverse shot is reduced to its essence, and the art of découpage – in the sense of depicting the actions as fluidly as possible, so that the viewer forgets the editing of the various scenes and shots – reaches new heights.

As is often the case with this director, Le Beau Mariage is a film that you either cherish or resolutely reject.

- Patrick Duynslaegher