vt Seven Days . . . Seven Nights
France, Italy / 89 minutes / bw / Iéna–Documento Dir: Peter Brook Pr: Raoul J. Levy Scr: Marguerite Duras, Gerard Jarlot Story: Moderato Cantabile (1958) by Marguerite Duras Cine: Armand Thirard Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Pascale de Boysson, Jean Deschamps, Didier Haudepin, Colette Regis, Valeric.
Anne Desbarèdes (Jeanne Moreau) and Chauvin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), two lovers whose time was never meant to be.
One of those movies that mesmerizes through its restraint, this is set in a dreary coastal small town—familiar territory for French cinema—where Anne Desbarèdes (Moreau) is the beautiful, bored wife of the principal local employer (Deschamps); “No,” she says at one point, summarizing not just the starkness of the place but her own life there, “summer never comes in this region. It’s always windy.”
One afternoon she’s watching her young son Pierre (Haudepin) take his piano lesson from the elderly Miss Giraud (Regis) when his faltering rendition of Anton Diabelli’s Sonatina in F (op 168 #1, first movement indicated as moderato cantabile) is interrupted by a long, uncanny howl of agony. Investigating, Anne and Pierre discover that a man (Valeric) has murdered his lover in a nearby bar, the Café de la Gironde, a place that seems normally a territory open only to men and whores.
Anne catches the eye of one of the bar’s regulars, Chauvin (Belmondo), who happens Continue reading
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