LES DESTINEES SENTIMENTALES

Directed by Olivier Assayas. Starring Charles Berling, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart

This adaptation of Jacques Chardonne’s bullet-stopping 1936 novel Les Destinees Sentimentales represents a long-standing labour of love for arthouse darling Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Late August Early September). ‘Labour’ would seem to be the operative word, when one considers the whopping three-hour running time – but let’s face it, no-one is going to devote three hours of their life to watching the new Olivier Assayas unless they really want to, and most of those devotees should emerge satisfied enough.

Though the subject matter – Destinees concerns the declining fortunes of a French Protestant industrial dynasty – would seem to hint at a thoroughly coma-inducing affair, it’s by no means as forbidding as you might suspect. Les Destinees Sentimentales is hardly a thrillfuckride of Pulp Fiction proportions, but the stateliness of the production, the lashings of Lutheran angst and the generally first-rate acting all combine to while away the time adequately.

1900, the Charante region of France: Jean Barnery (Berling) is an idealistic minister with socialist leanings, married to sullen battleaxe Natalie (Huppert) until in a fit of self-improvement he discards his vocation, faith and fish-wife in order to marry lover Pauline (Beart). This causes massive consternation among the upstanding members of the community, and in order to escape an avalanche of local scorn, the pair leg it to the blissful idyll of rural Switzerland, whereupon they spawn a son.

Before long, the torment of happy living proves way too much for Barnery’s Lutheran-inspired guilt complex, so he uproots the missus and sprog in order to run a porcelain business in Limoges, which is soon beset by grave economic difficulties exacerbated by the outbreak of the Great War.

While all the central cast perform as impressively as their reputations would suggest, the sublimely staunch Berling (Ridicule) is unquestionably the star of the show. Les Destinees Sentimentales is certainly not recommended to anyone in a rush, but there’s an impressively elegiac majesty about the whole affair that certainly justifies its existence, twinned with an intriguing dollop of siege-mentality suspense (sample quote: “We’re 200 Protestants with 5,000 Catholics watching us”).

This extremely subtle and understated work is hardly likely to win an overnight army of youthful converts to the French Heritage-flick fanclub – but taken on its own terms, it’s a worthy enterprise, and mandatory viewing for those who lapped up Jean de Florette. [TB]