Our History (1984) User Reviews

A beery tale

[bob998 · 7/10 · 24 January 2010]

This film is just about unclassifiable. What rubric do we put it under: melodrama, comedy, political satire, Pirandellian experiment? What is clear is that Alain Delon goes further towards demolishing his sexy warrior image than he ever did before or since. Here is an extroverted actor at home playing cops or gangsters, the only French actor I know who could team with Charles Bronson in a thriller and bring it off, and here he is playing a cheerless, withdrawn alcoholic garage owner. There is hardly any plot to hang on to, just a series of vignettes with characters describing their various joys or troubles. Somebody should have told Bertrand Blier that assembling 20 or so people in a house and getting them to philosophize is NEVER funny.

Delon does his new persona very well, and deserved the César award he got. Nathalie Baye has a big part, playing three different women, and is always funny and touching. The other players have much less interesting things to do, and the picture is overlong at 1hr.50min.

A surreal twist on marriage!

[darren_parry · 7/10 · 24 April 2001]

Please don't get me wrong - I like this movie. It is pure 80's French romantic cinema, has two excellent leads, and like the Flic flicks of the time, has relevant modern themes. It is, however, deeply flawed.

"Notre Histoire" is a classic example of a movie in which an established director carries out all the mistakes he should have shaken off at film school. For instance, Blier is the only director I know who doesn't know how to use music effectively - music is just slotted in at random points, and very unsuitable points at that.

Like a lot of Blier's work, this is a film of confusion, alternative reality and twisted takes on what we call normal life. Its' characters change persona, distance becomes meaningless, relationships blur - yet the film's final few seconds puts everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - into sharp context.

Essentially, this is a vehicle for Alain Delon, but it's nowhere in the same league as Le Samourai. It's Delon - the King of 60s Cool - playing Robert, a middle-aged man in crisis; yes, playing against type! His marriage is on the rocks, but being Delon, he attracts the attention of wayward young mother Donatienne (Baye). After a fleeting assignation on an SNCF train, Robert won't let go. Donatienne is the woman for him, and he won't give her up! To hell with the marriage, the job, the house, the normal life - let's be reckless!

What follows is a series of surreal set pieces taking Robert from fascination to obsession to the spiritual nature of beer. The surreal nature of the film does throw up some problems as times. The objectification of women for instance; women are displayed as problematic objects for men; inconveniences that get in the way of a good Gallic life. Even Nathalie Baye herself is portrayed as a hooker, wife, mother, teacher and adulteress in many episodes of the tale.

However, the leads are wonderful - Delon gives it his seedy, confused best, whilst Baye (in my mind the most underrated French actress of her generation) gives a wonderful weak/strong performance as the many faces of Donatienne.

Yes, this is a surreal love story. Yes, this is so Gallic it could not be remade in English. Yes, it isn't perfect, but it's an excellent example of a purely French cinema that is simply too homegrown to be appreciated by a wider audience.

Surreal film - two characters in search of a story

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 13 March 2017]

Notre Histoire (1984) stars Alain Delon and Nathalie Baye. Delon won the French equivalent of the Oscar, the Cesar, for this. He was not there to accept it. The presenter accepted it and still had it when he died. However to this day it has never shown up.

Robert Avranche (Delon), a garage owner mostly in an alcoholic stupor meets a young woman (Baye) on a train. She tells him a story, in a way fantasizing what will happen to them. They have sex. When she leaves, he follows her, obsessed.

Her name is Donatienne, and she sleeps with everyone. Robert won't leave her house and keeps drinking. The two tell each other stories, writing themselves in and out of them. The neighbors become involved, walking back and forth between houses in their bathrobes.

So what is the story?

This is a bizarre film which is wrapped up at the end, so if you see it, stick with it. It's actually fascinating. Delon is fantastic and deserved the award he received but never had in his hand. This supposedly demolished his super-cool killer image, but he never really gave it up, in my opinion.

Nathalie Baye does a wonderful job as well, playing several different characters.

Interesting movie!

Two characters in search of an author

[harry_tk_yung · 16 May 2005]

"Our story" starts not unlike "Before Sunrise" which came a decade later, with an encounter on a train. For a few brief minutes, it looks like it's even going to develop in that direction, until the film takes a sharp turn and starts to look like Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an author" as Robert (Alain Delon) and Donatienne (Nathalie Baye) try to decide who is a minor character in whose story.

This is not the super-cool Alain Delon that we are used to, but middle-aged, confused, dejected and sometime even comical, clinging to bottles and cans and glasses of beer which becomes the recurring motif in the movie. The story starts to get surreal as an ever-growing cast rampages through the affluent neighbourhood in the middle of the night in amorous and other pursuits. Superbly mesmerising Nathalie Baye starting out as the mysterious woman on the train becomes something like a particle in the quantum theory, changing constantly even as the observer observes.

And yet, there is meaning to all the apparent madness, and everything ties together quite well in the end. Those who must have a logical explanation for everything will be easily satisfied, but those looking behind the surface will find ample food for thought. Fantastic movie.

The THREE Faces Of Eve? You've Got To Be Kidding

[writers_reign · 6/10 · 16 October 2012]

Seems like Bertrand Blier can't do Surreal unless he begins either in a train station (Buffet Froid) or else ON a train (Notre Histoire). You can't say he doesn't go to the top-of-the-line because here he not only features Alain Delon and Nathalie Baye but throws in Vincent Lindon, Jean Reno and most notably Jean-Pierre Darroussin. If he'd only thrown in a decent script we might have been talking Classic as it is we have to content ourselves with fine movie brilliantly acted by Delon and an almost unrecognizable Baye - funny thing is that Darroussin is completely recognizable albeit light years younger than in most of the films we know him from, whilst Baye albeit far from a dog is not a tenth as gorgeous as she subsequently became and remains. What we're left with is a Cesar Award winning Best Actor performance, thoroughly deserved, by Delon, another SHOULD have won a Best Actress Cesar from Baye and Blier taking some of the stuff he lays on his analyst when on the couch and transforming it to the screen.

The strange woman in the train

[jotix100 · 5/10 · 28 April 2012]

Robert Avranche, a man riding in a first class compartment of a train, is seen lost in thought. One thing is clear, the man loves to drink his beer. Robert tells us how he will meet a strange woman, who surprise surprise, materializes soon after he announced it. She is Donnatiene, a woman who loves to hang out in train stations to see the passengers getting on, and off the trains that pass by. She is a mysterious woman, and Robert feels he must follow her to her home. What he finds there is a chaotic situation involving a whole community where the men love to come to watch him in action.

Not having seen the film before, we had a chance to watch it on a cable channel not long ago. The allure of seeing a film directed by Bertrand Blier with Alain Delon and Nathalie Baye in the main roles was a defining factor. "Notre histoire" though, is a dated film, which no doubt had a different resonance when it made its commercial debut. The script was written by Mr. Blier, who has done much better before. What the director gets is good acting in general. Mr. Delon and Ms. Baye are able performers that are able to carry any film by themselves. The interesting thing about the film is that actors of the stature of Jean Reno, Vincent Lindon, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and others are seen in small roles.

Notre Histoire : How Alain Delon engaged Bertrand Blier to direct a successful film for him.

[FilmCriticLalitRao · 10/10 · 1 September 2015]

Everybody knows that having good actors is considered to be a boon for a film which is acclaimed both commercially as well as critically. However,a good idea is also required to make a successful film by making good use of talented actors.This effect was achieved by maverick French director Bertrand Blier when he was hired by Alain Sarde and Alain Delon to shoot 'Notre Histoire'.Although this film doesn't have a very strong plot,it manages to retain viewers' attention through a series of hilarious episodes which question alcohol, beer, family, loneliness, love,sadness and sex.Apart from the presence of leading players Alain Delon and Nathalie Baye,viewers familiar with French cinema would be comfortable in recognizing other talented French actors namely Gérard Darmon,Michel Galabru,Jean Reno,Jean François Stévenin, Jean Claude Dreyfuss and Jean Pierre Darroussin.As an original idea about some ordinary characters with extraordinary strength, Notre Histoire continues to influence screenwriters especially in the manner it enables numerous stories to be added in a single film.

Don't give up halfway!

[zeikwijf · 8/10 · 26 March 2023]

Almost the whole film I was actually disgussed at how woman unfriendly it was ("Nouvelle-vague-ish, male gazed" I thought repeatedly). I wanted to stop watching but something in the quality (especially of the acting) held me back. Boy, am I glad I didn't unhook. The end is beautiful and sets the whole story in another perspective, one that is, even for a feminist like me, approvable. Yes there are unbearably sexist scenes, but it all makes perfect sense in the end (it doesn't pass the Bechdel test unfortunately - hence my 8 stars rating, 2 points penalty - but which film of the eighties does?). It turned the movie for me from hateful to adorable.

I actually wanted to watch it again right away, with that new insight in mind. But I had to free space for unwatched recordings so I deleted it. Now I regret. I have to watch it again.

Also: a trip down memory lane, for it is shot in my home region, the high Alps of France. I have been in a similar sports class at a similar school between similar mountains, in similar chalets, with similar ski's in the stairway. Only the people were obviously not from there (accent and demeanor), supposedly all Parisians.

flavors of old fairy tales

[Kirpianuscus · 26 March 2023]

At first, the impression to discover a collaboration between Pasolini and Fellini.

Then - the touch of Pirandello.

At final, a fairy tale , in modern aspects reminding old fashion Middle East stories.

In fact, a beautiful job of Nathalie Baye and Alain Delon. Especially alain Delon, offering a character just eccentric for his long career.

Provocative ? Not exactly. Only a story of love, illusions and adventures reminding so many cultural islands than it seems a revision of them. Poetic, bizarre and well crafted reflections of love dream, furies and angries and pieces of obsession for ideal of a sort of Don Quixote interpreted by the sex symbol of french cinema.