The unfair distribution of beauty in life ensures that attractive people usually have a clear advantage even when they grow old. Fanny Ardant is the prime example, making her an obvious choice for the lead role in a late love melodrama. Since the late 1970s, François Truffaut’s last partner has been one of the biggest stars in French cinema, and she doesn’t just seem “young at heart”, as the German title suggests. The original title of the film is “Les Jeunes Amants”, “The Young Lovers”, which is not even meant to be ironic given the young lovers that are the subject of this film.
Melvil Poupaud, who is 34 years younger than his co-star, plays the oncologist Pierre. In a short prequel, set 15 years before the main storyline, he meets Ardant’s character Shauna for the first time. In the hospital he tries to cheer up the girlfriend of a dying patient. Since he is also friends with their son Georges (Sharif Andoura), it doesn’t take too much coincidence for a late reunion.
This takes place on the sidelines of a conference in Dublin, where Georges’ family owns a house that is being renovated by Shauna, who is an architect. Lucky powers of fate are already in play. But are they really happy? From the moment they meet, the lovers sense impending disaster for their happiness. If only because someone might object. After all, this is the sort of melodrama for which the name of Douglas Sirk is readily at hand in the Critique of Figaro. One could also think of Fassbinder, who developed the idea for his romantic drama Fear Eats the Soul from two films by his favorite director, What Heaven Allows and As Long as There Are People.
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We do not know which style the designated director and screenwriter Sólveig Anspach had in mind; the Icelander, who was inspired by her mother’s late love, died before filming began in 2015. What Carine Tardieu (“A Breton Love”) made of it reminds neither of the one nor the other filmmaker, but rather orientates itself to a third great melodramatist, her compatriot Claude Lelouch.
The pianist’s gentle strumming on a public piano repeatedly underscores the romance, and Lelouch’s favorite composer, Francis Lai, is part of her repertoire. Everything else looks like one of his classic love dramas: the wide screen, the matt mixed colors, the elegiac, action-poor staging, the close-ups of the lovers. But why doesn’t a spark jump over, not between the actors and certainly not in the direction of the audience?
The movie “Young at heart”: where does the promised drama begin?
First, there is the over-problematization of the age difference. A big “So what?” paints itself invisibly on the screen. How does stuffy Georges get upset about Pierre? Yes, how can his best friend relate to his acquaintance who is like a mother to him? Pierre’s wife, played by Cécile de France, would have more reason to complain. However, she immediately fends off the impending confession of her actually kind-hearted husband by pointing out that an infidelity is nothing bad, she’s had it before… But when she then finds out about the age difference, things suddenly look different.
It probably dawned on the filmmakers themselves that bourgeois reactions alone would not make a love melodrama. So the screenplay invents a hidden illness that brings the finiteness of late love into consciousness from another side. At least, one might argue, she’s dating a doctor. But it is precisely he who is amazingly oblivious to the signs of physical decay. Could the promised drama finally begin? In a psychological study about denying one’s own mortality?
If only these downers were truly romantic! In fact, however, the filmmaker seems to share a good deal with her protagonists’ hesitant approach to the subject of late love. There is no other way to explain the omission of sensual love scenes. At 114 minutes, their film is saved from one tinkling piano piece to the next, and the Goldberg Variations are available in a version for acoustic guitar for a change.
400,000 viewers saw this film in France, which is not a large number in our cinephile neighboring country. In any case, it will not become a classic. Fanny Ardant fans can wait another four weeks before she’ll be back on the red carpet in Venice, starring in the new Roman Polanski film The Palace.
Young at heart. Feature film, 2021, 114 minutes, in the cinema
2023-08-04 00:08:32
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