User Reviews

Bruno Cremer is a fiftyish philosophy teacher who tries to help his seventeen-year-old student, Vanessa Paradis, get her academic efforts in order. She shows up late for class, if at all, she's flunking math and other subjects. He gives a lecture on Freud and the unconscious and asks her to stay after class and explain why she's so slack. After all, maybe he can help her.

The subject of his lecture, the unconscious, was apt because Bruno's ego has no idea of what his id is leading him into. One wonders if he is familiar with the Electra complex. Paradis invites him to her flat where she casually undresses and changes clothes in front of him, to his embarrassment. I mean -- even in Loire there are limits.

Before you know it -- or before Cremer knows it, at any rate -- they're lovers. Hints of the affair become received wisdom although both desperately try to hide their love for one another. Certainly, Cremer's wife knows about it. As usual, both females can waltz intuitive rings around the somewhat oafish male.

Cremer's wife is fed up with the constant phone calls and the poison pen letter and finally leaves him for a while, telling him to think it over before she returns. He thinks it over between roles in the hay with Paradis and decides it wouldn't work between the professor and the student. Sensibly, he ends it, telling Paradis that in ten years he'll be an old man. Her passion, though, seems adamantine. She'll love him whether he's young or old, thin or fat, sick or healthy. They can run away together and she can pretend to be his DAUGHTER. And she seems to mean it, but Cremer is mature (or dull) enough to see that not all things are possible. So back comes the jealous wife.

It doesn't work out. Paradis continues to haunt him and taunt him. She nuzzles up to one new boyfriend after another in front of him. Her accomplices break the windows and paint filthy sayings on the bookstore his wife runs.

At his wit's end, Cremer yanks her out of his classroom, flings her into an empty room and slaps her around, but she keeps coming back to him like a lost puppy until finally he gives in, peels off her clothes, and -- well, a few minutes later, the whole school seems to be peering through the windows at them, with one student yelling, "Hey, a teacher is screwing a naked girl!" What happens next to the undone Cremer is instructive. In America, if a teacher gets caught in flagrante delectable with an underage student, he (or she) winds up in court and then in jail. In France, Cremer is given a reprimand by his school and sent to exile in Dunkirk, where he continues lecturing as before. After all, screwing a naked seventeen-year-old girl on a classroom desk may not be evidence of savoir vivre but, well, why stir things up? (Insert here a philosophical shrug, the kind found in such abundance in France.) The performances are adequate, probably no more than that. Paradis is quite a lynx-eyed morseau with two shiny front teeth behind those tiny pouting lips. Seventeen? She's about as tall as Cremer's lower sternum. She's so petite and gracile, she looks as if she'd barely made fifteen, at least until she sheds her clothes, something that, to my perverted taste anyway, she doesn't do quite often enough. Her figure is exquisite.

Bruno Cremer LOOKS like a philosophy professor, big, soft, flabby, and comfortable, with gentle blue eyes. His nose, though -- it looks as if, when God was handing out noses, he asked Cremer what he would like, and Cremer replied, "Two lumps, please." That proboscis has its identical twin on the face of George C. Scott.

The script isn't bad actually. It deals intelligently with what is basically a conundrum without a solution. Paradis is right. They should take what they can get while it's available. But so is Cremer. Loving CAN be folly. Ten years, heck. In twenty he'll be 70 and she'll be a vibrant and eager 37. What's she going to do -- wheel him around in his lap robe to exciting night clubs? Jean-Claude Brisseau's direction is functional without being in any way imaginative. Cremer's switch from avuncular prof to jealous swain takes place too quickly. The outburst is unexpected. And Brisseau's got a shot -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- of the two lovers, one young, one old, running through a hillside field of canary yellow poesies beside a lake. All that's missing is slow motion. Otherwise it would be a parody of its genre. (Classy, adult, colorfully photographed soap opera.)

Don't get me wrong, Ephebophilia films like this, has always been a hard to watch. However, once in a while, some of them, really do shine such in the case like 1999's 'American-Beauty' or 1962's 'Lolita', as entertainment, due to their approach to black-comedy; while exploring the themes of romantic, paternal love, sexuality, beauty, materialism, self-liberation, and redemption. Unfortunately, this French movie is not one of those films; as it's mostly one dimensional in its humorless, dry and full of gloom tone with two very dreadful main characters; 47 year old, character, François Hainaut (Bruno Cremer) & 17 year old, Mathilde Tessier (Vanessa Paradis). Still, even when it tries to be blissful & romantic, with scenes of the lovers, rowing boats and making love on grassy hills in public. The film come off, as highly, cheesy, tiresome and clichés than a powerful message of the freedoms of ideal dream-like, 'White Wedding' love life, outside the reach of moral paternalism. Also, if the movie's goal was to show the dangers of forbidden love, like 2006's film 'Notes on a Scandal'. Then, it truly fails at that, with its semi laissez-faire approach of punishment in an ending; in which, the philosophy teacher still being able to teach, after being caught in the school ground having sex, even if the supposedly 'victim' was, over the age of consent. Now if the movie purpose was to be an erotic psychology thriller like 1987's 'Fatal Attraction'. Then, it likewise fails to work, as for the most part, so-called protagonist, seem alright with Tessier torment his caring wife, Catherine (Ludmila Mikaël), whom, doesn't deserve, any of this mistreatment. It's clear that the writing by Jean-Claude Brisseau just fails to be entertaining. The story was just mostly miserable. Also, it doesn't help that the film come across, as a self-inserting, sexism fantasy fanfic of a story, much like his later films, 2002's 'Secret Things' and 2006's 'The Exterminating Angels'. While, the film is not as graphic with its themes and nudity, as the other films. It's still egotistic & exploitation at its worse. Don't get me wrong, I get, somewhat, the film was trying to do with pessimistic cynical approach, between the May-December Relationship lovers, Nevertheless, Brisseau wrote the story, a little too vague, without digging deep enough to understanding the basics of female sexuality eroticism. Look, I get that, some women like Mathilde might indeed find Hainaut's power & sophistical knowledge, attraction, and maybe, they will manipulates him like a Femme fatale, in order to keep themselves, please, something similar to somebody diagnostic with disingenuous histrionic personality disorder. However, much of these ideas of stereotypical loose girl with daddy issues has already been so overplayed. The idea that these hysteria are caused by a lack of libidinal evolution, are also outdated and shameful. If anything, the movie feeds on the negative stereotype that the French people are full of stupid Erotomanics. Another thing, while, I do understand, the French culture being more quite open, when it comes to talking about sexuality & its taboos, compare to Americans. I doubt, they are that blasé with disturbing sexual acts. After all, in 2002, Brisseau was arrested on charges of sexual harassment after three women came forward accusing him of cajoling them into performing sexual acts on camera by promising them a film role. He was eventually found guilty, fined and given a suspended one-year prison sentence. So, it wouldn't surprise me that he once pull the same supposedly sleazy artistic stunt with then-15 year old actress, Vanessa Paradis, who was looking for her first film debut after her singing career launched with the song "Joe le taxi", a few years before. Regardless, on how shady, his practices of hiring actresses, were. His camera work with cinematographer, Romain Winding was still impressive. There were some beautiful shots, throughout the film, such in the case with the beaches of Dunkirk. Along with those shots, came, satisfactory music from composer, Jean Musy. I just wish, the score was just a little more memorable. Despite that, another thing that this foreign film has going for it, is the amazing acting from the main two performers. Both of them, do a good job, even if both of their characters are horrible people. Because of that, it's a lot better to watch this movie with English subtitles, than the awful English dubbing version. Overall: While, this movie is somewhat engaging. It really fails to live up to anything, else, than being mediocre, unpleasant and highly exploitation. For those reasons alone, Au revoir, 'Noce Blanche', I hope, never to meet you, again. I really can't recommended watching this movie. In short, there are better, more entertaining French films than this muck of a movie.

As a rule I have a hard time watching Vanessa Paradis but on the other hand I've only seen the stuff she did in the last decade. In this, her debut effort at the age of 17, she had yet to hone her nauseating Goldie Hawn schtick and was halfway believable as a screwed-up wild child. Director Brisseau cast 60 year old Bruno Cremer as the older teacher who has an affair with her (but was careful to cast 42 year old Ludmila Mikael as Cremer's wife) and just about stopped short of having Cremer say to Paradis 'let's get together and compare taboos'. There may well be an acceptable side to 60 making out with 17 and Brisseau might have been the guy to tap into it if he didn't have a penchant for sleaze - this, after all, is the guy who was arrested for sexually harassing an actress on a subsequent film, Chose Secrets, also steeped in unhealthy sex. If you work at it you can just about work up a sympathetic approach to the story and if all else fails there's always Mikael who could have done with more screen time. Overall this is interesting rather than entertaining.