Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud | Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Serrault

Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud | Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Serrault | Subtitles Cut off on Widescreen TV?

DVDs:

Nelly and Monsieur...

	Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Serrault New Yorker Video, 2001 average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 03/16/2004 Run time: 103 minutes

Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud is a Flawless French Film.

Claude Sautet's greatest film was his highly acclaimed Un Coeur en Hiver ( A Heart in Winter ), for which he won the César Award for Best Director in 1993. Three years later, he won the César again for his 1995 film, Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud. Both films starred Emmanuelle Béart. Sautet died of cancer in 2000.

Much like Un Coeur en Hiver, Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud is a subtle meditation on unspoken love and loss. Béart plays Nelly, a beautiful young woman married to Jerôme (Berling), an unemployed man who has given up on his life and his marriage. Nelly works as a temp to support them, and to keep one paycheck ahead of their significant debts. Their life together in Paris is unhappy and, disillusioned, Nelly longs for a new life without Jerôme. When a retired judge, Pierre Arnaud (Michel Serrault), offers Nelly 30,000 francs as a gift, she uses the money to pay off her marital debts and then to escape from her troubled marriage. When Nelly agrees to work as Monsieur Arnaud's assistant, typing his memoirs, she awakens romantic feelings in Monsieur Arnaud.

One of the things I enjoy most about French films such as this one is that, unlike Americans, the French seem so much more grownup in their attitudes toward sex and relationships. The May-December relationship between Nelly and Arnaud is not intended to be a typical Hollywood romance. It is more complex, and it may not live up to some viewers' expectations. This film avoids cliches, and the result is a film that feels real. Béart and Serrault carry the film with their subtle, nuanced performances. Highly recommended.

G. Merritt

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Subtitles Cut off on Widescreen TV?

Can anyone confirm that the 2nd line of subtitles are cut off the bottom of the screen when played on a widescreen tv? I began watching the film on my Sony 46" Widescreen and anytime a 2nd line of subtitles appeared on the screen I could only see the top of the words barely. I tried on another DVD player and it was the same. I tried all settings, (Full, Zoom, Wide-zoom, Normal) and all 4 cut the subtitles off. I ended up watching it on my 4X3 Sony 36" TV and I could read the subtitles. Anyway, good movie, just wish I could watch it on my Widescreen.

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The eyes of Emmanuelle Beart

are featured rather prominently in this ultra sophisticated film by Claude Sautet, perhaps to the point of annoyance for some. Mlle. Beart, whom I first saw in Claude Berri's Manon of the Spring (1986), has the largest, most beautiful eyes one would ever want to see, and she is a fine actress with a smooth and subtle style. However I think that Sautet worked too exclusively with glances of nuance, raised and lowered lids, eyes widened and narrowed and such and such to further the story and to create character when he might have added a line of dialogue here and there.

Yet I liked this and certainly prefer such a style to the loud gestures and over the top hysterics that some directors might have employed. Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (Beart and Michel Serrault) do raise their voices once--a lover's spat one might say, he to perhaps show he is still alive, she to show that she cares enough to get angry with him and has an independent spirit.

This then is a love story, super fine like gossamer and civilized to the point of something close to a burlesque of being civilized, and yet, and yet, because he is well past the age of retirement and she a vibrant young woman in her prime, the story must be presented in symbol and gesture: the back rub, the Platonic staying overnight, the little spat mentioned above, the muted jealousies, the stealthy triumph of the returning wife--in short it has everything a love affair might have, the bittersweet (their parting) and the bitter (a night with another, younger man) and the very sweet (the Sauternes, Chateau d'Yquem, no less, older than the woman herself, apres diner).

What Sautet does so well and so completely here is show how such a bloodless affair can touch the heart of both the old guy who knows that he can never express himself sexually and the young woman who knows that as well, how their love is emotional and deeply felt but like those two ships passing in the night, ephemeral and at some unavoidable distance. One could say--and I think we'll all felt this--that the two are soul mates separated by an implacable difference in age who by chance experience an intimation of their love together, and then it is gone.

I also liked the behavior in which Nelly says she has done something and then, only after she has said she has done it, does she do it! At first she rejects Arnaud's financial help. Then she tells her husband that she has gotten this money from an older man, gratis, and only then does she accept the money. Later in the film she tells Arnaud that she spent the night with the editor when she has not, and then afterwards, she does spend the night with him. Interesting psychology. I have actually known someone who would do that. It is like trying out an action to see how it is received before doing it!

There is one rather serious problem with this DVD. On my Samsung flat screen TV only the first line of the subtitles could be read. Only the very top of the second line appeared, forcing me to miss some of the subtleties of the dialogue. I understand this is in the DVD since other reviewers have reported the same problem.

See this for Michel Serrault, whose credits in 12-point type are longer than my arm (IMDb lists 155 as an actor) and for Emmanuelle Beart whose unique beauty is unforgettable.

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Affectionate and affable but less than meets the eye

Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud is a chamber piece that never really goes anywhere. It's not so much that it's bad, more that it's slightly flat compared to Claude Sautet's earlier films like Les Choses de la Vie and Cesar et Rosalie despite an amusing cameo by Michel Lonsdale, appearing like a self-satisfied but slightly dense slug from time to time. It's a film that probably meant more to Sautet than his audience (Michel Serrault based his performance on the director, as witnessed by the photos of the two on the set in identical outfits and haircuts). To me it was little more than a time-passer with few insights, although the sight of Emmanuelle Beart's hopelessly inept attempts at faking being an accomplished typist offered some unintentional amusement: obviously this is one actress who never worked as a secretary while resting.

The French DVD offers a good widescreen transfer with removeable English subtitles. The only extras are a stills gallery and the French trailer.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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