Domicilio Conjugal

What does it mean to be married, like properly so? As someone who has been in a pretty terrific one for a lot of years, one of the key things is that you should try to, as corny as it may sound to some of you, be friends - nay, to be a best friend - and to actually be in a partnership where the affection has to keep moving to somewhere, even (especially even) if it doesn't feel like it is at times. In Bed and Board, Antoine Doinel has to reckon with what a marriage is and how, whether it's based from where he has been in a home life that was unstable and rather mean and cold on its better times, he can't keep the love and friendship consistent, and certainly not to the level Christine expects or deserves.

I think Bed and Board is most fascinating and involving because it is another part of the complicated saga of Doinel's life. You need that context for it to work so well, and on its own I wonder if it may have been more off putting or simply confusing when very late in the film, once Doinel has been found out by Christine that he's been cheating with a (can't believe I'm typing these words) less interesting Yoko Ono kind if character and has been in this affair for some time and it seems like his marriage may be on the rocks, he calls up Christine multiple times while at dinner with his would-be side squeeze to complain about how miserable he is and... it's almost like he needs permission for it to all be over, that he's OK and that it'll all work out.

Ill leave it to you to watch it to find that out. But suffice it to say this is on its own terms at times sort of equal parts mundane and entertaining in a completely off-beat and off-kilter way, such as the various interlopers and neighbors in the apartment complex where Antoine and Christine (a very engaging and excellent and can hold her own with Leaud level performer in Claude Jade) live together, and as well equal parts amusing and heartbreaking.

I mean, this is a movie where at one point Antoine breaks through a wall with an axe or sledgehammer like a more jokey Jack Torrance, and at another when Christine confronts Antoine with his infidelity (she finds it out because the Japanese lady has been leaving messages in roses which in a string of events I won't get into end up in the apartment and she sees them) by uh dressing up in Japanese garb and make up and wtf I laughed but I'm not sure why. Oh, and Jacques Tati makes a cameo as M Hulot getting on a train because Truffaut is I guess making a Hulot movie only Doinel is like far from that(?)

I love a good marriage drama or story on infidelity, and this absolutely has that if nothing else because this couple with Leaud and Jade are wonderful together, as they convey how each really in their own way is trying to make this marriage work, whether it's in those little moments in bed when it's time to turn off the lights (a particular tender moment involving her glasses is something that feels lived in like if Truffaut or his writers didn't take it from a real moment then the actors did), or when they do have their blow-out fights (that poor mattress).

Again, it's fascinating that this is the follow-up so soon after Stolen Kisses as it has sometimes the same light tone but other times manages to probe into the existential maybe-trauma exploration of 400 Blows, and eventually in the film it becomes clearer that the little things with Doinel, how he acts or reacts or closes up or looks at another person, is all about what HE is looking for or needs, while Christine has to just take it.

In other words, this is a good movie, at times really good, but it is contigent on if you've seen the other parts of what these people have gone through. As a tale of marriage it is both sweet and unfortunate, like biting into a bar of rich milk chocolate that has a sour patch kids middle, and one where Truffaut (because after all this is his and to an extent Leaud's alter ego) is self criticizing himself and men like them. And the filmmaker's idiosyncrasies make it linger and pop more than what you'd get with anyone else, though I can't help but feel the parts are greater than the whole here. Oh well, on to the last part!