Follows in many ways Delvaux's preceding work "Un Soir, un train", using the bleak wintry plains of Picardy. A film of secrets and nuances, playing with objective time and external reality, which will leave viewers who cannot appreciate its subtleties in the cold. Without an ending, you have to imagine what could happen in the light of what you think has happened (another of its references to our own impending ends).
At root it is the story of Julien, a young man who most of the time is a fish out of water. From a modest family in Luxembourg, his country is overrun by the Germans in 1914 while he is a pianist in Paris. His friends there are Odile and her lover Jacques, a rich young composer who gets Julien a job on a newspaper while he goes off to join a fighter squadron. Later, Jacques asks Julien to meet him behind the front at Bray in his family's country house, which is shut up and looked after by a solitary housekeeper. Julien turns up, but Jacques never arrives.
Around this central thread are spun many mysteries. Waiting at Bray for Jacques, with artillery thundering nearby, Julien reflects on their time together in Paris before the war. Memories of the three young people having fun remind us often of Truffaut's "Jules et Jim", though them all ending up naked in the River Marne has no ill effects. He also revisits his triumphs and humiliations. For Jacques has the assurance of riches and breeding, while Julien is a poor uncertain immigrant speaking French awkwardly. As well as their love of contemporary music, mainly Debussy and Franck, the three love films about Fantômas. Julien however has no girl to love.
He also claims that he cannot fight for a country that no longer exists, which is almost certainly self-deception. On the train to Bray, he talks about the war to a bearded French soldier who is travelling with a striking silent woman. With difficulty finding the decayed and shuttered house, he is greeted by a beautiful but monosyllabic servant. At bedtime, in a dressing gown with her hair down, she shows him to a bedroom where, after offering herself silently, she stays the night. That could well be his fantasy but, like much else in the film, we do not know.
In the morning he rushes across the fields to get a train back to Paris, but it leaves without him. Some reason that we have to guess keeps him at Bray, foreshadowing the eerie atmosphere of Chabrol's "Alice ou la dernière fugue".
Superb mood-setting cinematography and first class music of the time are a joy for eyes and ears. While the male leads are perfectly adequate, the two females are entrancing. Bulle Ogier as Odile plays a fun blonde, her shoulder straps slipping and her food wobbling around her dinner plate. But Anna Karina dominates as the nameless enigmatic housekeeper, sphinx-like in leaving herself to be understood without words.
At root it is the story of Julien, a young man who most of the time is a fish out of water. From a modest family in Luxembourg, his country is overrun by the Germans in 1914 while he is a pianist in Paris. His friends there are Odile and her lover Jacques, a rich young composer who gets Julien a job on a newspaper while he goes off to join a fighter squadron. Later, Jacques asks Julien to meet him behind the front at Bray in his family's country house, which is shut up and looked after by a solitary housekeeper. Julien turns up, but Jacques never arrives.
Around this central thread are spun many mysteries. Waiting at Bray for Jacques, with artillery thundering nearby, Julien reflects on their time together in Paris before the war. Memories of the three young people having fun remind us often of Truffaut's "Jules et Jim", though them all ending up naked in the River Marne has no ill effects. He also revisits his triumphs and humiliations. For Jacques has the assurance of riches and breeding, while Julien is a poor uncertain immigrant speaking French awkwardly. As well as their love of contemporary music, mainly Debussy and Franck, the three love films about Fantômas. Julien however has no girl to love.
He also claims that he cannot fight for a country that no longer exists, which is almost certainly self-deception. On the train to Bray, he talks about the war to a bearded French soldier who is travelling with a striking silent woman. With difficulty finding the decayed and shuttered house, he is greeted by a beautiful but monosyllabic servant. At bedtime, in a dressing gown with her hair down, she shows him to a bedroom where, after offering herself silently, she stays the night. That could well be his fantasy but, like much else in the film, we do not know.
In the morning he rushes across the fields to get a train back to Paris, but it leaves without him. Some reason that we have to guess keeps him at Bray, foreshadowing the eerie atmosphere of Chabrol's "Alice ou la dernière fugue".
Superb mood-setting cinematography and first class music of the time are a joy for eyes and ears. While the male leads are perfectly adequate, the two females are entrancing. Bulle Ogier as Odile plays a fun blonde, her shoulder straps slipping and her food wobbling around her dinner plate. But Anna Karina dominates as the nameless enigmatic housekeeper, sphinx-like in leaving herself to be understood without words.