La discrète

Another instance where movieland gets a charming girl to play a person whom the other characters refer to as "hideous" and "ugly." I suppose that's a film-making aside for the audience to see her inner beauty to which the other characters are blind. I'd like to see a film where the supposed ugly character is played by a truly "ugly" character actor : that way, our values and perceptions are challenged to overcome surface beauty as much as the characters on screen are challenged to.

Jean and Antoine's relationship is interesting. Jean symbolizes an omniscient force in Antoine's setup match with Catherine. Antoine continually consults Jean for the next move in the relationship. One gets the feeling Antoine and Catherine are pawns in a chess game Jean is playing. But who is Jean playing against?

There is a pattern of repetition that is established from early on in the movie. Antoine's daily visits to the cafe, his visits to Jean, the retyping of manuscipts. I got the sense that there are cycles within cycles in an interlocking machine of fate. Do we know who is controlling the destiny of Catherine and Antoine's relationship? Is it Jean, is it Antoine, Catherine?

The little anecdotes Antoine tells are the subtext/footnotes to the storyline.

Catherine walking alone on the countryside to Domenico Scarlatti's K87 sonata is a gasp of quiet solitude that subtly expands her loner narrative.