Marie-Jo et ses 2 amours

How many films haven't you seen (especially French ones) about the married woman having an "affair"? There aren't many surprises here either, but the acting makes it believeable anyway. It's too much to say that this is like a documentary, it's far from it, but the realistic performances by Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Pierre Darroussin give real life to everything.

Marseilles plays a big part here. That city is almost like an actor. The emotional conditions for these people might have been different somewhere else. The tempo is slow however and so is the temper. You have time to breath, watching this.

More Marseilles melodrama in the usual ultra-realistic style, and with Marseilles itself as co-star. Trim, 40ish Marie-Jo (Ariane Ascaride) is happily married to doting builder husband Daniel (John-Pierre Daurossin) but she has also fallen in love with craggily handsome bachelor Marco (Gerard Meylan), a harbour pilot. She has a job transporting the sick which gives her plenty of opportunity for dalliance with the frequently idle Marco, until one day her daughter Julie (Julie-Marie Parmentier) spots her at his flat and realises what Mum's up to.

Despite the sunny locale we know things are not going to end well, but what happens is a bit of a surprise. Ariane Ascaride gives her character plenty of the required sexiness, middle aged though she may be, and John-Pierre Daurossin does a great line in dog-like devotion (even when he finds out). I thought the Marco character a little unsatisfactory – what is he in this relationship for? Also I'm still trying to work out why the Marseilles-Corsica ferry, in and out of the harbour every day, still needs a pilot. (Maybe the pilots, though redundant, have a strong union. They certainly have a flash shore office). Anyhow Marie-Jo needs some emotional fulfilment outside her marriage, and he's it.

Robert Guediguian has a talent for bringing interest out of the ordinary and getting us to like his characters despite their flaws. He also mixes in the Marseilles atmosphere and manages to produce a cheerful tragedy, if that's possible. His use of the same actors in film after film gives a curious continuity to his work, despite the different roles – a repertory of the cinema, in fact. Ordinary their subjects may be I still find his films absorbing and on occasion moving.

Marie-Jo is a woman who lives a perfect and happy couple's life with his husband, Daniel, and his daughter Julie. Daniel has a small building company and Marie-Jo works as ambulance driver. But Marie-Jo also loves Marco, a pilot of Marseille's harbour. Equally loving the two men, Marie-Jo shall face a very difficult situation and she lives this double love as a curse in spite of happiness that she has with it. She particularly suffers to be lying to her husband and not be able to share his love for Marco with him. One day, she makes a choice and goes away from his house to live with Marco. But, she can't accept the distress she has herself given to her husband and, after some days, she returns home. Nevertheless, Marie-Jo will return once a time with Marco and that will be the cause of the final drama. During a sea excursion aboard their boat, Marco and Marie-Jo will die by drowning. Suicide or accident? The movie perhaps a little too long is valuable by the actors' performance in this tragic love story, the sensibility of the telling of this adultery situation, the well-painted ambiance of human relationship in this Marseille district called "L'Estaque" and the magnificent Renato Berta's cinematography.

When I watch this film, and some others from Robert Guediguian's team, crew: Jean-PierreDarroussin, Ariana Ascaride, Gerad Meylan, I can't prevent myself to think about Romy Schneider, Michel Piccoli, Yves Montand,....and Claude Sautet's films. More than Marcel Pagnol's style for sure, despite the South of France's settings. The magic way those two directors (Sautet and Guediguian) have to describe those characters relationship in bitter but so beautiful, poignant, moving dramas. It is so simple, brilliant, intelligent, because most of audiences can recognize themselves in those portraits. So human, so sensitive. The technicalities in term of pure directing are of course a bit different. And Marseilles is also a character in most of Robert Guédiguian's films. Pure delight despite the bitter taste in the mouth after watching. Don't confound with François Truffaut's JULES ET JIM, because of the scheme of a woman in love with two men. Or Oliver Stone's SAVAGES.

Robert Guédiguian has created a world out of some parts of Marseille that I feel very comfortable in. His stock company of Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin have made many films with him, and are at ease with his practices. If Darroussin's character is perhaps a little too eager to go along with his wife's infidelity, the richness of the narrative makes us pardon this flaw.

The film does have a very slow action which will make some viewers impatient. It takes a long time for Marie-Jo to leave Daniel and go off to Marco's house, and she has trouble at work (she drives disabled people to their doctor and back) that isn't fully examined. Ariane Ascaride's performance is fully equal to the demands made on her, and made me think more than once of Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut's masterpiece, a similar situation of a woman having to choose between two men and failing to do it.