My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days

Apart from Sophie Marceau's frequent bouts of nudity, there's nothing remotely beautiful about this overly hysterical and pretentiously cryptic melodrama about exceedingly unlikable people! This was my third Andrzej Zulawski film after L' IMPORTANT C'EST D'AIMER (1974) and POSSESSION (1981) and it proved even more of a chore to sit through!

Surprisingly enough, Zulawski later had a child with his gorgeous leading lady here; one would have thought that his harrowing depictions of male-female relationships in most of his films (which frequently degenerate into shouting matches and violent beatings) would have put paid to any romantic ideas on her part! Anyway, when I was in Hollywood a couple of months ago, I had the chance to catch up with two of Zulawski's most intriguing films on DVD-R, namely THE DEVIL (1972) and THE SILVER GLOBE (1977-87; which was in Polish without English subtitles!) - but I decided to pass on them...!

After the phenomenon that was "La Boum", Sophie Marceau was faced with a dilemma; either continue making commercial features, or change her image by taking part in auteur films. She opted for the latter, rejecting Claude Pinoteau's -the director's who discovered her- "La septième cible" and playing the main roles in Maurice Pialat's "Police" and Andrzej Zulawski's "L'amour braque". It was with the latter that she also made "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours", a film about madness , love and how they intertwine.

This film doesn't exactly have a plot. Its meaning is in the dialogues, conducted by a mentally ill woman and a physically ill man. Her, child of an abusive household, works as a medium and performs a spectacle between striptease and theatre, in which she predicts the future of any of the spectators that asks her. Him, a computer programmer, has invented a new programming language, but doesn't have much time to celebrate, because he suffers from a terminal disease. These two meet and discover that they can share their deepest fears, their hopes, but, most importantly, their ideas. They talk using intricate metaphors, and symbols, words that rhyme. Essentially, the French language is made use of to express the love between these two beings. This is a film as much about its ability to convey complex thoughts and concepts as much as it is about romance.

Romance isn't the only thing explored in "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours"; Madness is too. For, both heroes feel love as something different than most people. They are insecure, unique, want to find someone as intricate as them. They don't say "I love you". Instead, they resort to metaphors, indirect means of expressing what they feel. Is it because they can't? Is it due to their past having made them to emotionally cold to feel? It could be both. The important thing is that they are so different from all others in terms of behaviour that they could only end up together, and its their madness that lets them live their romance with such passion.

Both Sophie Marceau and her co-star, Jacques Dutronc, showed this mindset perfectly. Dutronc was a yéyé singer, popular for his subversive, revolutionary lyrics. His charm and coolness was wanted among directors, with Steven Spielberg asking him to play the villain in Indiana Jones, and Dutronc refusing only because he didn't speak English. Was this a sing of arrogance, or of real knowledge of oneself? To me, something in between.

The aforementioned choice of Sophie Marceau to participate in "L'amour braque" instead of "La septième cible" is also indicative of a mix between arrogance and self-knowledge. It is known in the world of French show business, that when she told Claude Pinoteau that she was leaving the film, in order to take part in Zulawski's movie, he got irritated. He felt betrayed. The actress whom he had discovered, simply rejected his work, considering it too restricting for her image. And so, he let her go, but with a heavy price, both metaphorically and literally: she was forced to pay a big sum of money so as to cancel her contract. It was this lack of interest for others, combined with the will to improve one's position with the help of a kindred spirit, that characterised "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours".

"Ordinary" is not a word I would use to describe this film. "Sweet" neither. "Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours" is a special kind of film, a director's vision of the love between two outcasts, of which the only possible conclusion is the lovers' death. That I didn't like it maybe serves more to show its uniqueness than its flaws. But, for me, this uniqueness just took away all of the romance, and the ambitious language only made their love seem artificial. As artificial as the weapons of a thriller.

The weapons of "La septième cible".

This movie has a sad entrance, a sad climax and a sad end, but between it is crazy, it is postmodern-french, it is fabulous and Sophie Marceau is growing bigger here. Sometimes remembered at P. Greenaway, I would see parallels to Damage/Fatale (1992): an interesting erotic drama with some sad moments and good actors especially actresses. Find out, who plays better, J. Binoche (Damage) or S. Marceau here !

"Love is a pond that can drown you."

Words...

We use words all the time, to the point that they become banal, that we forget the power they hold, the beauty they can assemble. Yet this movie reminds you of it. It rearranges everything you know about language and shows you raw beauty, love and sadness. It shows you pure, unadulterated emotion.

Words, we sometimes forget, are the human creation to define the things around us and the ways we sense them. They can teach and transform us, connect us with others. Words, above anything else, can make us feel.

And this is precisely what this movie does. As its protagonist slowly loses touch with the words he once knew and clings to those he still remembers, as he starts feeling and seeing like an infant - we, too, are reduced to infants. Because, by deconstructing the notions you have as an adult, the knowledge you possess and the words you use, you end up at the simplest rhymes, the pure definitions, the plain emotions you used to carry as a child.

So we're invited to see the world as if for the first time again, the sea, the colors of life. To see words for their sound, their meaning; to treat words as entities on their own. And to feel, to truly feel as if for the first time. To embrace the love and the sadness that pervade our lives. To connect with people, with nothing between us. To live.

The love the characters carry through the film is unabashed; it's pure and real. They love for the sake of love, without anything - no useless words, not even life - in the way. A kind of love that is enough, and everything, in itself. A raw love, that resides in the dreamers' reality; a child's love.

And yet the film still reminds you of the sea... About how it swallows us, no matter how big our brains and our dreams may be. In the end, those are just made up words. Like us.

There's something about existing, truly existing for a brief moment, and being genuinely known by someone else. That's love. That's all that we can dream of in life. Then the sea washes over us, and it's like we were never here. For a brief while, however, our words will echo through the waves.

And that's enough. In fact, that's everything.

"Somewhere beyond the sea... To leave? Or not to leave? That is the question. The sea comes, goes, flows... Waves of alabaster... Master. Master of cruel fate and solitude, master of solicitude, anxiety."

I have only seen one other Zulawski film before this one, POSSESSION, and while I found that film to be better than this one (to be precise: something of a masterpiece, in my opinion), I believe that MES NUITS SONT PLUS BELLES QUE VOS JOURS is essential viewing for anyone who loves French romantic cinema. Though Zulawski himself is Polish, MES NUITS(...) is thoroughly "Francofied", from its almost absurdly poetic title to its frank depiction of violence and sometimes aberrant sexual behavior (not to mention sex in general, of course).

The story concerns Lucas (French singer-actor Jacques Dutronc), a computer genius who has finally hit the jackpot, inventing and selling a new computer language that will revolutionize the field of technology. To be sure, Lucas would ordinarily be thrilled with this, but he has just learned that he is suffering from a rare disease that begins by destroying the memory. With seemingly days left to live, he meets a beautiful, much younger woman in a café: Blanche (Sophie Marceau, then-lover of director Zulawski) is an up-and-coming nightclub performer and model (who seems to have psychic abilities). Though completely different from one another, they have one thing in common: desperation. Lucas's desperation comes from the knowledge of his impending death; Blanche's desperation is more spiritual in nature. Both Blanche and Lucas suffer from memories of tragic childhoods, and both feel alone and unloved even though they should feel on top of the world. The two begin a strange affair that I'd hesitate to call "tender"; there is plenty of passion in this film, but it is all very cold, as I believe was intended. In Zulawski's universe, there is no time for tenderness, and the laws of passion are the only ones worth following. As the film hammers on in an energetic, often funny fashion, it becomes increasingly dark and tragic. By the film's end, we are spending much of our time witnessing a fractured reality from Lucas's point of view. His deterioration is portrayed brilliantly by having Lucas constantly speak, in an attempt to hang on to sense and logic, only to lose all hope as his ability to communicate thought breaks apart, and gibberish flows ceaselessly from his lips. A tragic film, a darkly comic one, but at the last moment, I think an oddly optimistic one.

It's really too bad that so many people have never heard of Zulawski. After seeing only two of his films, I'm convinced that he's a unique and engaging filmmaker who deserves far more respect. Perhaps the future will see a discovery of his work. Quickly, before Zulawski retires...!