Review #3: From the Land of the Moon
By Eva Claire Schwartz
Nicole Garcia’s From the Land of the Moon, is a dreamy, Nicholas
Sparks-directs-in-France type of drama that promises sexual undertones and
passion, yet is shot in a romantic fashion suitable of 1950s French
countryside.
We meet Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard)
satisfying her sexual conquest by lifting of her skirt and allowing the river
to wash over her. From a seemingly conservative French rural family, we are
shown that she sticks out like a sex-obsessed sore thumb, unabashedly writing
explicit poetry to her married (with a child on the way) schoolteacher at a
large gathering and throwing herself onto him. But after exposing herself in a
window to the farmworkers blowing off steam below, Gabrielle’s mother decides
some changes have got to be made: marry her off or ship her to a mental
institution.
Aware of her daughter’s beauty,
Gabrielle’s mother pulls Jose (Alex Brendemuhl) aside and promises him a life
in business if he takes their unstable daughter out of their house. Jose
agrees, but Gabrielle flees to the barn before signing on to the matrimony. She
refuses, however, to sleep with him, but he gets by, openly hiring prostitutes
out for sex in a nearby town.
After presumably many nights of
this, Gabrielle decides to have sex with Jose in exchange for the money he
would have paid whatever prostitute he encountered. This scene is not steamy
like we’d imagine of Gabrielle’s fascination of the “principle thing” , but
rather we find ourselves wishing it was over, specifically for Jose’s sake. It
shouldn’t be that hard to muster up some zeal for an alluring husband (he’s got
the whole ‘dark-brooding-man-of-few-words’ appeal down), but we end up with a
lackluster scene where no eroticism takes place and he climaxes after mere
seconds.
Around this time, Gabrielle is
shipped off to an expensive spa/treatment facility that the couple doesn’t seem
to be able to afford to take care of her kidney stones. Her treatment consists
of her sitting around in a plush, white bathrobe and sometimes being shot with
a high-pressure water hose (better than the lobotomy which was also on the
table). Here she meets man of mystery, Andre Sauvage (Louis Garrel), whose
appearance hints at an incurable illness, given that he’s bedridden 90% of the
time. But oh no this is the man of Gabrielle’s dreams. He can play the piano
beautifully; he’s tall, dark and handsome; and he’s just come from battle.
She is obsessive over him, sobbing
and running after the car that transports his body for treatment. But ah! he
returns and following a brief affair, he swears he will send for her, his love.
Gabrielle can focus on nothing but
him. She candidly write him love letters in the months that follow, confessing
to Jose that she will, in fact, leave his ass when her darling sends for
her. When Andre doesn’t write back (Notebook anyone?), Gabrielle writes a
final letter to tell him she is pregnant with his child.
The rest of the film follows her
daily life, detachedly raising her son, Marc, and coinciding with stable-minded
Jose, until relying on the final fifteen minutes of shock factor that end the
film. On that note, you need the surprising twist to fully understand the
character development that Garcia hopes to achieve with Gabrielle.
Marion Cotillard leads Garcia’s film
into woe-is-me splendor. Without her, the film would center around a whiney,
no-good female lead who brought nothing to the table. But Cotillard’s portrayal
of self-centered Gabrielle leads us to ask very real questions that we have to
figure out for ourselves. Is Gabrielle a slave to her illness? Or is she merely
a narcissistic woman caught up in lust when the sexual revolution wasn’t going
to hit the home front for a while? Queen of tormented female leads, it’s hard
for us to believe anything but the first. Gabrielle was taught to sexually
stifle herself, and therefore was unable to healthily express any emotions she
had. If feeling sexual urges was wrong, then what feelings of hers were
correct? She was trapped in an environment that actually suggested a lobotomy.
This is the age of “hysteria” and “lunacy”, two words made up to express the
socially unacceptable behaviors of women. How did anyone grow up “normal”?
Alex Brendemuhl’s portrayal as
steadfast Jose counterbalances Gabrielle’s wacky and off balanced behavior,
making us hope he can catch a pleasantry for his wife at some point. He seems
to truly love her, especially given the revelation the plot springs on us, and
reminds us he has been there the whole time (reminiscent of Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd).
While the film is effective and
enjoyable to watch, in the end it can be chalked up to be a character study of
under-sexed Gabrielle. Either you will sympathize with her antics or you’ll be
frustrated that she can’t concentrate on anything but herself for more than 60
seconds.
Director: Nicole Garcia
Producer: Alain Attal
Screenwriter: Nicole Garcia, Jacques Fieschi (based on a
novel by Milena Agus)
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Louis Garrel, Alex
Brendemuhl, Brigitte Rouan, Victoire Du Bois, Aloise Sauvage, Daniel Para,
Jihwan Kim, Victor Quilichini
Run Time: 116 minutes
