‘Cesar et Rosalie’ or — Fluffy Love ?

Claude Sautet’s ‘Cesar et Rosalie’ (1972) is a somewhat frustrating movie. Much like dating an overly exuberant Yves Montand it’s playful and a delight yet it also becomes somewhat grating and tiresome… much like dating an overly exuberant Yves Montand.

Cesar loves Rosalie and Rosalie loves Cesar yet Rosalie also loves David, her first love, whom she meets again at a wedding. Cesar asks Rosalie if she still loves David and Rosalie tells Cesar that she still loves David but that she also still loves Cesar. Having had such an open and honest conversation about their private desires like two adult human beings, and being continental, Cesar and Rosalie make love.

And this first forty minutes or so is where ‘Cesar et Rosalie’ really shines, bringing a refreshing and mature approach to the fact that people, sometimes, might want to have sex with other people. It, essentially, deals with the same issue as ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ except whereas Kubrick’s film is all immaturity, air-tight claustrophobia and sexual inertia Sautet’s movie is filled with light, air and joie de vivre. It’s liberating, both sexually and visually.

In fact, it’s maybe filled with too much air as after that the entire movie feels in danger of turning into a cinematic souffle it becomes so light and inconsequential. Yes, it deals with the intimacies of love and loss in the way only the French can pull-off but the dramatic thrust, the narrative energy practically evaporates to the point where I’m tempted to use another nouvelle cuisine metaphor. Once that evaporation process has occurred all that is left is surface.

And it is a pretty surface with Sautet taking inspiration from French art, a fact he explicitly and rather condescendingly informs us of in a way in which he might as well have just stepped out from behind the camera and told us straight to our faces that ‘this film is like looking at a painting’. So every frame and every shot as the composition and colour of a work of art and it’s seriously seductive. Yet, much like Jacques Demey’s ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’ (1967) the overall product feels less like an example of storytelling and more an exercise in total aestheticism. Which can be a good or bad thing depending on your mood.

‘Cesar et Rosalie’ has enough to it to recommend watching. It has a wonderful, breezy charm augmented by some great performances, some gorgeous design and very pretty cinematography. It’s just a shame it didn’t have just a little more weight to ground it into something a little more solid. But then again, when you’re in the mood for souffle solid isn’t what you’re looking for?