A seventy-seven minute film should not take three hours to watch. Thanks to the unbothered tone, however, and a narrative that amounts to "Relationships: Those that work, and those that don't," or maybe "Romantic relationships and the behavior that people within them exhibit," I fell asleep multiple times while watching. Enchanting and actively engaging this is not. That's not to say that 'La jalousie,' or 'Jealousy,' is "bad," and I've seen plenty of other films that adopted a similar low-key tenor and made fantastic use of it. Sometimes I prefer such works to those that pointedly dress up their storytelling. The ideas here bear suitable potential, and in fact the plot boils down to recognizable fare for many romantic dramas. The problem is that this consciously flattens that drama, and the movie never does anything more than lazily float down the river of its runtime. It might wave at we spectators in the audience as it bobs past, but mostly it feels like it's napping, too.
I don't specifically fault anyone involved. The cast and crew turned in fine work, the writing is fine, and though the direction might be most culpable there's nothing particularly wrong about what Philippe Garrel is doing here. I'm personally inclined to think that Willy Kurant's black and white cinematography is the most outwardly commendable aspect of the whole feature, lending the look and feel of a title that might have been made fifty years before. I don't altogether dislike this - I just don't think it's interesting enough, or unique enough, to be noteworthy, and there's nothing here that hasn't been done better elsewhere. I wish nothing but the best for all who participated in its creation, yet as far as I'm concerned 'La jalousie' is a forgettable blip for which saying "take it or leave it" is demonstrating effort disproportionate to the value the picture can claim.
