Review: A Man and a Woman

****½ / *****

"It's crazy to refuse happiness."

Winner of two Academy Awards - Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay - and nominated for other two - Best Actress in a Leading Role (Anouk Aimée) and Best Director - in 1967, Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman is a sublime exploration of a love between two people with enough emotional baggage and personal demons to inhibit their chances at happiness. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis Duroc, a semi-famous race car driver, who by chance meets Anne Gauthier (Aimée) at the Deauville boarding school both of their children attend, and offers her a ride back to Paris. They're each single parents coping with the tragic deaths of their spouses, although in their initial meeting, Anne gives the impression that her husband (Pierre Barouh) - a film stuntman - is still very much alive.

Jean-Louis arrives at the truth quickly enough to offer Anne a ride back to Deauville the following weekend, where they and the children go on a double date of dinner and a boat ride. Thus begins the process by which they fall in love, slowly and organically, through held gazes and lingering hands. And whereas many films would make the jump from the dinner table to the bedroom, Lelouch expands on the flirtation, delaying the pay-off and layering the relationship with his character's backstories, the means by which they've come to this place.

He shows us the untimely death of Anne's husband and the suicide of Jean-Louis' wife after a particularly gruesome crash, but more importantly he shows us a long montage of Anne and her husband completely and totally in love, accompanied by the enchanting sounds of Barouh singing "Samba Saravan." At first it seems like an indulgent flourish by Lelouch that takes the audience away from the romance on screen by showing in detail a past love, but it later gains more resonance as Jean-Louis and Anne grow increasingly closer and Anne attempts to rationalize this move away from a man she loved so dearly, even if he is long dead.

All this culminates in the famous scene where, after Jean-Louis successfully completes the gruelling Monte Carlo Rally, Anne telegraphs him from Paris to tell him, finally, that she loves him. Without delay, Jean-Louis jumps back in the same car he's driven across Europe and speeds toward Paris, telling himself that when a woman sends a telegraph like that, you go to her no matter what, even if that means driving thousands of miles without rest. He reaches her, and they make love for the first time, but as they are, Lelouch cuts to images of Anne and her husband, indicating that while her body is with Jean-Louis, her mind is still devoted to someone else. She's even still wearing his ring. Eventually, Jean-Louis figures out that he's effectively making love by himself and they go their separate ways. It's bittersweet and beautiful at the same time.

The story of A Man and a Woman is endlessly fascinating, made all the more interesting by Lelouch's narrative choices. At numerous points, he eschews dialogue in favour of flashbacks, montages, music, and race commentary. This accomplishes several goals (in addition to making the film more financially feasible). It allows the audience to more easily project themselves into the characters, as an image of two people talking with music replacing the dialogue draws us into the interaction between the characters, rather than distracting us by what they're saying. We naturally assume that what they're saying to each other is similar to what we would say in that situation. As a result, we become more invested in the relationship. It also gives the film the feel of a fairy tale romance, thanks in large part to the enchanting score of Francis Lai and Baden Powell.

Take, for example, the scene at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club where Jean-Louis receives the telegraph. Lelouch puts a camera on a balcony and films it in an uninterrupted long shot as Jean-Louis reads the message, excuses himself from the table, and leaves the ballroom. We hear none of this, but it's clear enough that's what he's doing. Most directors would have either cut to closer shots and given us the dialogue or eliminated the scene altogether, but neither choice would have been as effective. It's a vital part of Jean-Louis' character arc that he leave immediately, and the uninterrupted shots convey that perfectly, but it's also unnecessary that we hear what he says. In fact, it's better that we don't. Lelouch's choice is a perfect balance.

The more celebrated choice of A Man and a Woman is the mixture of scenes shot in colour with those shot in black and white. Much has been written about what Lelouch meant to convey with this device, whether the b/w served as quotation marks or the colour was meant to be a somewhat different version of reality. The answer, however, is almost disappointingly simple. The budget for A Man and a Woman was not large enough to film the entire thing in colour, but the potentially lucrative American market required colour and an investor was willing to supply more money to the project if the film could play the American market. So, Lelouch filmed his interiors in black and white, as planned, and used colour for the exteriors. Simple.

The compromise is a practical one that people have been reading into since the film was released, and may have been a factor in Lelouch's Best Director nomination. It'll surprise no one to hear that the mixture has influenced many filmmakers since (from Woody Allen to Wim Wenders), but had the project been able to raise more funds, it wouldn't have even existed. And for that, we're all thankful.