Painful unrequited love is
cinematic torture and gold. Television shows love to drag out unrequited love
for an entire season, if not longer. Just look at the tension which was allowed
to build on The Office (the American version) before Jim and Pam were finally
allowed to kiss. The reason that it works so well is because they are finally
given the opportunity to kiss which relives the suspense from the shoulders of
the audiences tuning in each week. Un Coeur En Hiver, or A Heart in Winter, is
intensely successful in the installment of suspense in the audience, which is
left dangling there for nearly the entire film without any promise of relief.
It takes remarkable direction to pull this off without upsetting an audience
from the emotional torment, but Claude Sautet certainly seems capable.
Emmanuelle Beart is absolutely
engaging as a miraculously talented concert violinist, Camille. She is
smothered by her chaperone and although she has become engaged to a man who repairs
violins, Maxime, although she only truly seems interested in opening up to his
reserved business partner, Stephane, who is the one with the real talent with
violins. Maxime and Stephane work together but have little in common except
that they both seem affected by Camille. Maxime’s arrogance and natural charm
overshadows Stephane, who seems to watch the world from a distance. Camille is
slowly attracted to this reserved man, somehow relating to his solitude in
life, which builds inevitable tension between the three of them.
While Maxime seems to have no real
skill other than wooing people, Stephane and Camille have extremely rare
abilities, and they only seem completely at peace with their surroundings when
they are making art; Stephane with his incredibly sensitive violin repairs and
Camille in her passionate violin playing. These instruments are the heart of
the film and all of the emotion which they keep repressed inevitably comes out
through the music in the film. The only difference between the two, who are
each attracted to each other, is that Stephane is unwilling to love. For
whatever reason, whether it is a bad childhood or refusal to hurt his partner,
he rejects Camille’s love, which somehow makes her love him more. It is a
desperately painful sight to watch and even the producer admits that it isn’t a
box-office friendly film in a segment from a documentary in the special
features.
In many ways A Heart in Winter
became less of a romantic film for me because it almost seems at moments as though
Stephane is purposefully manipulating the people in his life. Because of how
little he says it is impossible to know for certain what he is thinking and I
kept expecting some sort of a revealing monologue to provide closure which
would never come. This feeling of anticipation never satisfied brings the
audience into the same position as Camille, an uncomfortable switch to say the
least.
The DVD has a newly restored HD
transfer of the 1992 film, which was personally supervised by the film’s
director of photography. There are also a few special features including an
excerpt from a documentary, Claude Sautet
ou la magie invisible, which covers a lot of examination of the film in
just a short amount of time. There are also three interviews, two of which are
from French television. Two of the interviews are with director Claude Sautet
and the other is with actor Andre Dussollier.
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