Themes: Women's Friendship, Crumbling Marriages, Marriages of Convenience
Main Cast: Miou-Miou, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Guy Marchand, Robin Renucci
Release Year: 1983
Country: FR
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
French filmmaker Diane Kurys directs the period drama Coup de Foudre (distributed in the U.S. as Entre Nous), adapted from a book she co-wrote with Olivier Cohen. The semi-autobiographical story is based on the life of the director's mother. Lena (Isabelle Huppert) is a Jewish refugee from Belgium living in occupied France during WWII. In order to avoid being sent to a German concentration camp, she agrees to marry the discharged military officer Michel (Guy Marchand). He tries to provide a decent life for her by running an auto repair business. They have two children together, but Lena is unhappy and stifled by her domestic life. Michel doesn't offer her the sensitivity and affection that she requires. Meanwhile, in Paris, the extroverted artist Madeleine (Miou-Miou) mourns the accidental death of her husband. After the liberation of France, she marries actor Costa (Jean-Pierre Bacri) and has children of her own. In 1952, Lena and Madeleine meet by chance in Lyons. The two women develop an emotional relationship that borders on romantic involvement. Their bond is only strengthened by a mutual dissatisfaction with their husbands, children, and home life in general. Entre Nous was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1983. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
Diane Kurys' semi-autobiographical account of a long-term friendship between two women is a complex evocation of shifting gender roles. In 1952 France, two women meet at their children's school. Lena Isabelle Huppert is a Jewish refugee who married to avoid deportation and Madeleine Miou-Miou is an aristocratic woman with an artistic streak. Both unhappy in their marriages, they quickly develop a close relationship, with the film focusing on the attraction of the initially self-effacing Lena to the restless, charismatic Madeleine. Kurys' insistence on the mediocrity of the two husbands is somewhat disingenuous, since both women made marriages of convenience. Yet given the restrictive mores of the time and place, one sympathizes with the women's dreams of leaving their mates to start a business together. Ultimately, the most moving aspect of the film is the painful effect of the breakup of Lena's marriage on her two daughters, the younger of whom is based on Kurys herself. While the actions of the two women often seem cold and self-serving, it's difficult to envision a viable alternative outcome, a testament to the film's sense of truth. Huppert is impressive as a woman beginning to blossom for the first time in her life, and Miou-Miou is a believably striking catalyst. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Patrick Bauchau - Carlier; François Cluzet; Jean-Claude de Goros; Jacqueline Doyen - Madame Vernier; Dominique Lavanant; Denis Lavant; Anne Levy - Maria; Nils Tavernier; Christine Pascal - Sarah; Bernard Cazassus; Guillaume LeGuellec - Rene; Jacques Alric - Monsieur Vernier
Credit
Jacques Bufnoir - Art Director, Mic Cheminal - Costume Designer, Diane Kurys - Director, Joëlle van Effenterre - Editor, Luis Enriquez Bacalov - Composer (Music Score), Jacques Bufnoir - Production Designer, Bernard Lutic - Cinematographer, Ariel Zeitoun - Producer, Harald Maury - Sound/Sound Designer, Diane Kurys - Screenwriter, Diane Kurys - Book Author, Olivier Cohen - Book Author
Entre Nous tells the story of two young married women in the 1950s who don't recognise how unfulfilled they have been in their marriages until they meet each other. In the preliminary scenes, set in 1942, Lena (Isabelle Huppert), a pretty 18 year old, has been arrested and brought to an internment camp for Jews in the Pyrenees. The camp is guarded by members of the French Foreign Legion, and one of them, Michel (Guy Marchand), writes her a note warning her she may be deported to a Nazi camp, and offers her marriage as a means of escape. She accepts. During the marriage ceremony she discovers that he too is Jewish; she's dismayed to learn that she won't have the protection of a gentile name. But she has no choice and they hasten to the Italian border. By 1952, the hardworking Michel has got himself his own garage in Lyon, and they have two small daughters. Lena meets Madeleine (Miou-Miou), at a school pageant. Madeleine, who comes from a moderately wealthy family, was an art student in 1942, and had married a fellow student who was killed in a street skirmish between the students and the collaborationist police. A widow at 19, Madeleine drifted into marriage with an actor/black marketeer, Costa (Jean-Pierre Bacri), and now has a son at the school. The two women become inseparable. They develop an intimacy that is based partly on their boredom with their domestic situations. Michel and Lena's marriage is fractious, although there are moments of happiness with their two young daughters, and the film is primarily about Lenas leaving her husband. At the end of the film, she and Madeleine (who left her own husband sometime earlier, had trouble holding down a job, and went through a nervous breakdown), are about to open a dress shop in Paris.[1]
