"Un Coeur en Hiver"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                       "The Women's Show"
                     WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
                        September 4, 1993

    There aren't any films playing in the Tampa Bay area this week
that fit easily under the rubric "women and film."  There is
just the usual end-of-summer collection of boys' films and,
happily, one small masterpiece for grown-ups.  I started to say
"adult film" but, sad to say, that phrase has become a euphemism
for "pornography" while the film I'm speaking about, a French
import called "Un Coeur en Hiver" or "A Heart in Winter," is
anything but pornographic.  It is a beautifully realized study of
some complex adults and their complex relationships, set in the
world of classical music.  This is a film that I had some advance
notice of from a friend in the North (where foreign films tend to
arrive more quickly) who raved about it.  I see why.  So did the
judges at the Venice Film Festival who gave it their Silver Lion
Award.

Director and coauthor Claude Sautet has made, as far as I know,
the first film ever about luthiers (that is, those rare
craftspeople who make and repair fine violins and other stringed
instruments).  The film starts with Stephane (Daniel Auteuil), in
voice over, describing his relationship with Maxim who owns a
successful Parisian business that not only repairs but also buys
and sells rare and expensive instruments.   Maxim (Andre
Dusoullier) is the outside man, the affable, outgoing, charmer who
interacts with the musicians who are their customers, who cuts the
deals, who travels the world.  Stephane is his long-time partner,
the "genius repairman" who stays in the shop and does the hands-on
work that solves the musicians' problems with their instruments,
and supervises and trains the apprentices who are learning this
trade.  He is quiet and a loner, living Spartanly in a room off the
shop.  He and Maxim have little contact outside of their work
together and travel in different circles--Maxim's wide and varied,
Stephane's limited to a woman, Helene, who owns a neighborhood
bookshop and his former violin teacher Lachaume (Maurice Garrel),

Maxim is having an affair and planning to move into an
apartment with a beautiful young woman violinist named Camille
(Emmanuelle Beart).  She has been living for the past ten years
with her agent, an older woman named Regine, who clearly loves her
(though they probably have not had a physical relationship) and who
is going through her own emotional hell as Maxim's presence in
Camille's life changes their relationship from a close, intimate
one to a more merely professional one.   Camille, who is just about
to do an important recording of a Ravel trio, has a problem with
her violin and Maxim brings her to see Stephane, who is able to
repair it, and who comes to a rehearsal and the first recording
session to make sure everything is all right.  Camille is unsettled
by him, then smitten, then obsessively in love with him.  He finds
her attractive but does nothing intentionally to encourage her,
though his very lack of response serves to intensify her passion
for him. Finally when she throws herself at him he declines and
tries to explain that he doesn't love her, that it's not a part of
his make up to have close emotional relationships with anyone, he
doesn't even consider Maxim his friend, merely his partner, and he
just prefers not to get involved emotionally with other people.  It
is this frozen, or at least dormant, "heart in winter" of
Stephane's that this film is all about, and how those, like Camille
and Maxim and Helene, who fall in love with or think they have a
friend in a person who's unable to reciprocate their love, react
and respond to this situation.

If you like European "art films" with their sensitive and
serious character studies, if you like chamber music, if you like
fine, subtle ensemble film acting, "Un Coeur en Hiver" is a film
you will surely want to see. Claude Sautet deserves the raves he
has received for this beautifully shaped and realized film.  It's
playing this week at the Movies at Pinellas Park.

For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on
Women and Film.

Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights reserved.  No
portion of this review may be reprinted without the permission of
the author.