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Je vous aime
Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Serge Gainsbourg star in this forward-thinking drama about an independent woman and her relationships with four men, from director Claude Berri (Jean de Florette).
Director: Claude Berri
Overview
Alice (Catherine Deneuve) decides to celebrate an unconventional Christmas by inviting her four ex-lovers - played by Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Souchon - to dinner, along with their children. This leads to her flashback reminiscences of the various ups and downs of these occasionally overlapping relationships. Never released theatrically in the UK and barely seen outside of two 1990s BBC2 broadcasts, Claude Berri's film was arguably awkwardly ahead-of-its-time in 1980. With its chronologically unstructured narrative and its disarmingly dispassionate stance towards Alice's carefree approach to sex and relationships, it's a film that may find a more receptive audience today.
An unusual film in the filmography of Berri - often closer to the spirit of his countryman Maurice Pialat than the lush period pieces such as Jean de Florette (1986) for which he's best known - Je Vous Aime was perhaps the director's attempt at correction following a series of male-focused sex comedies throughout the 1970s. Despite its more serious tone, Berri still includes some fun sequences here, such as a duet between Deneuve and Gainsbourg, plus extraordinary scenes of Depardieu playing saxophone and singing in a punk rock band.
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