A tormented man chronicles the events that led to his act of desperation that culminated with the killing of his wife. Éric Rohmer is
the mastermind behind this adaptation of Lev Tolstoy's short novel "The Kreutzer Sonata", an oppressive and wordy film where his character
tells everything in an almost non-stop manner, telling about the misfortunes of falling in and out of love with a younger woman (François
Martinelli), a person he couldn't figure out why she wanted to be with a complicated man as him, and as old as him.
It's often said that Tolstoy's novel is a manifest on sexual abstinence and the pointlessness of loving/sexual relationships. The film
doesn't seem to follow such idea all that much. It surely destroys the myths of relationships saving all problems of life, specially if one isn't
so certain of what they want from life and what they want from their partners. Poznyecev (Rohmer character) is a crazy contradiction of sorts, but
very human and real to us, always chasing the ideal, the dream but never satisfied when reaching there, complaining and destroying everything, to
the point of basically throwing his wife on the hands of a handsome colleague (Jean-Claude Brialy), of whom the girl is more affectionate - Poznyecev
own words.
The greatest attractive of this particular film is seeing several legendary figures of Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) all together in
one piece: Rohmer, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and the only on-screen appearance of Cahiers du Cinema founder/reviewer André Bazin (a key
figure of French cinema who died at a young age before many of those filmmakers start making their own films); and the conduction of scenes and
elements, pretty much the basics of what Nouvelle Vague would become in the following decade: several editing cuts, voice-over that doesn't always
follow the image, etc. It's early steps of the format, not exactly perfected and with that kind of material it gets a little weary to have only
the lead character tell us everything (the idea would work better for something more philosophical and more quieter in "The Man Who Sleeps", and
previously with Resnais in the documentary "Nuit et Bruillard").
Haven't read Tolstoy work, so this comment is strictly over the film as itself. Considering the existentialism wave of that era, it's a quite
interesting experience to watch, to make reflections about the choices one makes in life, concerning the people we allow to enter in our lives.
Despite the rush of Poznyecev words each sequence goes by and each disastrous action he commits over and over, the film makes you question
about everything he doesn't do and could improve his life, or change his perspective. Why is he obsessed in following a younger group where he's
totally out of place? Why not finding someone with an age proximity? Or try to control his thoughts and accept the love he was given without
complaints?
There's a moment in Godard's "Le Petit Soldat" when Michel Subor characters looks in the mirror and says that he feels that the image
of himself in it doesn't match with his inner self. Poznyecev's idea of love might be something like that, after watching many happy, loving couples
and when he found himself with the ideal person, something wasn't quite right, it doesn't match with his ideas of a perfect relationship. To
both characters I say: whatever the problem, it's all in their heads. 7/10.
