La gueule ouverte

My Rating : 6/10

When death comes knocking at the door...

'The Mouth Agape' greatly reminds me of 'Cries and Whispers' and 'Amour' however it is more organic and real without the fancy aesthetics and settings.

Well-executed family drama with some great moments towards the end. Interesting to watch it for the immediate family's reactions.

Death is certain and unpleasant and 'The Mouth Agape' gives a serious treatment to the subject with realism minus all the cinematic embellishment (which is a good thing!).

I won't give anything away by saying this is about the reactions of the close relatives of a woman who is dying. It is a stunning, absorbing and beautiful study of these people, and I was totally entranced, I would have been happy for it to be twice as long. The emotions portrayed were so honest, with no hint of gloss or sentimentality. The human condition has never been better-portrayed.

This is a sad film with beautiful photography and some haunting music. It deals, graphically and unflinchingly, with the gradual death of a woman. Both the male characters (her husband and son) are portrayed as unsympathetic and incorrigible philanderers. The son (Philippe, played by Philippe Leotard) is married to a strikingly attractive woman (played by Nathalie Baye) yet he still cheats on her. Incidentally the cast list on IMDb seems to credit two different women as playing the part of Corinne, one of the women with whom Philippe goes to bed. The actress playing this part is in fact the strikingly attractive Marie-Blanche Dehaux, and she gives a good cameo performance. The film is an interesting reminder of the fashions in 1974, and is also a reminder of the casual racism and anti-immigrant prejudice which was apparently normal in rural France at that time.

This is not the greatest film by Pialat, but is still far better than most others of its time. It was his third feature, and the first set in his native Auvergne. Monique, a woman in middle age, is slowly dying of cancer, while her husband Roger tries to cope with his feelings of desperation by chasing women. The scene with the girl trying on the yellow pullover in Roger's store is marvelous: he feels her breasts while she seems not very upset over this, or amused either. Philippe is the only one of their children who is still around, and he seems to be following his father in philandering. His marriage with Nathalie will be a rocky one if he can't settle down. Nathalie herself is intelligent, maybe a bit too much for Philippe.

Pialat takes such chances when he shoots a scene: see the opening with Monique and Philippe at home listening to Mozart and talking about family matters; it goes on almost ten minutes, dangerously long you might think, yet Pialat and the actors bring it off beautifully. Hubert Deschamps settles into his part so well, he hardly seems to be acting at all. Same for Monique Melinand and Philippe Leotard; only Nathalie Baye seems a little self-conscious at times. Nestor Almendros was the cinematographer, he had already worked with Truffaut and Rohmer. Pialat wanted available light whenever possible: this accounts for the occasional muddy moment in the film. Is La gueule ouverte available as a Region 1 DVD yet?--if not, why not?

The last picture:Philippe Leotard and Natalie Baye are leaving home behind.He drives at a dizzying speed.Then the father,alone in his deserted house,turns off the light.

The young couple thinks he can escape:it's not pleasant to stay in a house where one of your folks has just died.But actually,it's their OWN death which they fear ... Death is no more an abstract word (which concerns the others),it's something certain.

"La Gueule Ouverte" is Pialat's "Cries and Whispers" (both his film and Bergman's were released at about the same time).But "La Gueule Ouverte" is devoid of aestheticism: directing is icily remote,music is completely absent (with the exception of the scene when Monique Melinand is listening to Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" ),no embellishment; nothing is spared the audience and the fact that such a harrowing screenplay succeeds artistically without falling into the trap of vulgarity or/and sentiment is entirely due to Pialat's natural feeling for economy and sparseness which preclude all forms of conventional sentimentality.

His characters are despicable persons,with the eventual exception of the mother who seems more educated (Pialat seems to indicate she must have suffered from the meanness of her family: the father and the son play around ,even when she is about to die ,the daughter-in-law tries and tries to show some compassion but she's finally completely indifferent.

Nothing was spared the audience indeed .The dying woman 's unbearable breathing -and the scene lasts three interminable minutes- ,the body placed in the coffin, the old man crying his heart out...

My two favorite Pialat movies are this one and "L'Enfance Nue" .The latter deals with the beginning of life ,of a harsh life whilst the former depicts an inhuman death.