Movie of the Week: “From the Land of the Moon”
“From the Land of the Moon”
In the mass-production of Hollywood films, we are always forced to swallow shallow protagonists, monochromatic ones, opposite faces of an old coin that includes only Good and Evil, black and white, zero or one, ignoring all the nuances between them. So it’s a nice surprise to see the movie “From the Land of the Moon” (“Mal de Pierres”, France 2016) by French director Nicole Garcia, who gives us a magnificent character, played by the likewise magnificent actress Marion Cotillard.
The film is based on the book Mal di Pietri, by the Italian writer Milena Agus, centered on the story of an unusual woman. The young Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) lives her youth in the Provence region after World War II.
Living in a highly repressive time and ambience, Gabrielle doesn’t fit in that world. With a romanticism fueled by the books that her professor lends, alied to a repressed and exacerbated sexuality, suffocated by the conservatism of the countryside and religion, Gabrielle is constantly facing the limits that oppress her.
The unrequited passion for the teacher, the bold way of speaking and acting, the constant state of war with the family lead Gabrielle to the threat of hospitalization in a sanitarium. The alternative offered by her mother is to marry José Rabascal (Alex Brendemühl), a Catalan refugee who works on the family farm.
Without options, Gabrielle decides the situation in her own way. She seeks out José and sets her terms: they will marry, but there will never be any sex, and she will never love him. Resigned, José accepts the conditions, because his love for her is great. She accepts even that he seeks prostitutes to satisfy himself.
The two maintain a common life, within the agreed conditions. In her peculiar form, Gabrielle even experiences sex with José. But from that experience results a discovery that gives the title to the book. She is diagnosed with “stone sickness”, kidney stones, and for that the solution of the time was an internment in a thermal station where the water was the main remedy for the disease.
Gabrielle reluctantly submits to this new ordeal. In a secluded hotel in the mountains, she gets bored enormously in a place where she did not want to be, surrounded by people she does not know, and doing a treatment that does not interest her. Her boredom diminishes when she meets Agostine (Aloïse Sauvage), a young housekeeper who came from the same region as her.
It is then that she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a young officer of the French army who is in treatment of a serious renal disease. The isolation contributes to a unexpected friendship, which for Gabrielle evolves into an intense love.A worsening of his situation forces him to be transferred to another hospital, which leaves the girl desperate.
The reencounter allows the moment of love that Gabrielle so desired, and when he leaves again, she will keep from this encounter an unexpected pregnancy and a new understanding with the husband, who remains in his resigned silence.
Gabrielle writes tirelessly to Andre, but never receives any answer. When the letters are returned, she despairs and attempts suicide, being saved by José. The birth of the son causes her to transfer to him her unrequited love, and she sees in the boy the image of André, even the aptitude for the piano.
When they make a trip for a contest that the boy, now a teenager, there happens a discovery of secrets that have been hidden for a long time, and that will change Gabrielle’s way of seeing her own past.
This is a story out of the ordinary, and to live a character so rich in extreme facets, it was important to choose an equally chameleonic actress like Marion Cotillard. For Marion, who made Edith Piaf in various ages, it was easy to repeat the feat in the current film, practically only with some changes of hairstyle.
The director Nicole Garcia dared to use the flashback feature, which had been in disuse lately, and showed a good job in the conduction of the actors, notably Alex Brendemühl, who lives the contained and resigned husband of the protagonist.Louis Garrel lives a character very different from the ones he is used to do.
“From the Land of the Moon” is an interesting and different movie, deserving to be seen and discussed. This movie is on the schedule of the Varilux French Film Festival 2017, which premieres this week in several Brazilian cities.
Original Title: “Mal de Pierres”