Marthe (1997)
Directed by Jean-Loup Hubert

Film Review

If you overlook its occasional bursts of mawkish sentimentality, this modest wartime romantic drama has a great deal going for it.  The melancholic photography not only evokes the mood of the period in which the film is set, it also lends the film a persistent undertone of tragedy, making us more conscious of the transience of love and life as experienced by the protagonists in such a cruel period of uncertainty.  There are some resemblances with Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004), but Marthe is the better film because it is far less reliant on cinematographic technique and offers a more convincing story of love found and lost.

Engaging though the film is, there are very few surprises in store for us.  Marthe is a fairly conventional kind of melodrama which follows a fairly predictable course, but some exceptional performances from an impressive cast prevent it from being a mundane timewaster.  Most memorable are the contributions from the two leads, Clotilde Courau and Guillaume Depardieu, both of whom bring depth and tenderness to their portrayals of two incredibly fragile individuals caught up in the calamity of WWI.   

Although near the start of his career, Depardieu had already proven himself to be an actor as worthy as his illustrious father Gérard - first in Alain Corneau's sombre drama Tous les matins du monde (1993), then in Pierre Salvadori's amiable comedy Les Apprentis (1995).  In Marthe, playing a young soldier with an astonishing sense of reality, he can hardly fail to move us as his character becomes entangled in a romantic attachment that cannot end well.  Gérard Jugnot also deserves a mention en passant, for his brief but unforgettable portrayal of a crippled soldier.

Where the film particularly makes it mark is with its harrowingly authentic reconstruction of the World War One battle scenes.  They may not be on quite the scale of a blockbuster war film, but these sequences - which use of point-of-view shots skilfully to heighten the drama - are extraordinarily effective, giving us a truly terrifying awareness of the nightmare that was trench warfare.

The film was written and directed by Jean-Loup Hubert, who had shown a remarkable versatility in his work up until this point.  After his lightweight ensemble comedy La Smala (1984) he made what is generally considered his best film, Le Grand chemin (1987), a bittersweet portrait of childhood that packs a powerful emotional punch.  Less impressive was his subsequent sentimental melodrama, La Reine blanche (1990), which fails where Marthe succeeds, to fully engage the emotions with its honest portrayal of simple human dramas.

Film Synopsis

Autumn, 1915.  Wounded on a World War I battlefield, a young soldier named Simon is sent to a town on the Brittany coast to convalesce and receive medical treatment.  Here, he meets and falls in love with an attractive young schoolteacher, Marthe.  Although she is engaged to a man who is also serving in the trenches in this seemingly interminable war, Marthe cannot help falling in love with Simon.  Fearing that he will be lost to her if he returns to the frontline, she contrives to have him stay with her.  Simon is torn between his love for the woman he adores and his duty as a soldier...