«Stonesick»

Le Regard Libre N° 22 - Loris S. Musumeci

The most banal of love tragedies is presented here in the first part of Stonesickness. And yet, Nicole Garcia's masterpiece, currently showing at the Cinématographe, is not a film that leaves you indifferent. It's not just another good film for which you'll shed a few tears at the end of the screening. The selection of actors, the impeccable and free aesthetics of the cinematography and the essential background details that give meaning to love, make this film about life an excellent success.

Gabrielle's knees are nailed to the chapel bench, her eyes streaming and her hands choking in prayer as she asks the still-suffering Christ from atop his wretched cross, «Give me the main thing or let me die.»

She's in love with her teacher, passionately. He doesn't want her. What can a poor young girl do in the midst of hopeless disappointment? What more can she do, submissive to her parents in 1950s France? She can do nothing. Nevertheless, she rebelled. They think she's crazy; she's sick. She had to be married off or committed. So she is literally married off to a young Spanish worker, her father's son. Gabrielle resigns herself, accepts while refusing everything around her.

The internment comes, for a stony ailment: kidney stones that prevent the new couple from having children. At the place of the cure, in Switzerland, appears Monsieur Sauvage, a dark-haired handsome man wounded in the Indochina war. He will be Gabrielle's second passion, and the one who occupies most of the film. Between illusions, sexual desire, the joy and bitterness of life, the drama continues the story in its own way.

Marion Cotillard, playing the main protagonist, young Gabrielle, fleshes out her character with charm, but also with innocence, eroticism, anguish, gentleness and savagery. She draws on the heritage of Madame Bovary and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Louis Garrel, as Monsieur Sauvage, plays with his appearance. He is calm and cultured, dark and Catholic, upright and sublime. Alex Brendemühl has the most difficult role: that of the forgotten Spaniard used to find a husband for Gabrielle. He is the man of the story, the guardian of love. A love that suffers, cries, drinks and is silent, but remains; I call it true love.

Each image highlights these actors because it is meaningful. The richness of the content is due above all to the Italian Milena Angus, whose homonymous novel inspired the production of Stonesickness. In fact, what undoubtedly gives the entire film a hauntingly realistic mystique is the stripped-down humanity offered by its stories of ordinary and unique lives. A young woman dreaming of «the main thing», a soldier nostalgic for the war, a worker in search of meaning and bread.

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

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