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While Victor Hugo is
generally considered to be the father of French Romanticism, no figure better symbolizes
the movement in the way she lived than the novelist George Sand. Separated from her
husband early on, Sand lived an independent life both professionally and sexually that was
scandalous to the staid French haute bourgeoisie. She smoked and wore men's clothes and
advocated free love, while carrying on a series of very public affairs.
Sand's liaison with composer Frederic Chopin has been memorialized by
such films as A
Song to Remember, in which Merle Oberon played the role, and the more recent and
far superior Impromptu,
with Judy Davis doing a star turn as Sand. Both films include as a minor figure Alfred de
Musset, the poet and playwright who preceded Chopin in Sand's affections. The Children
of the Century, a new film by Diane Kurys (Love After Love, Entre Nous) is centered on
the earlier relationship with Musset, while Chopin is relegated to a nonspeaking cameo.
Musset wrote a novel about their affair, The
Confession of a Child of the Century.
Sand covered the territory in her novel, She
& He
and
in her journals
and there are published letters and biographies of both, providing a wealth of raw
material from which the screenplay could draw. When they met, Sand was 29 and Musset was
23. Their age difference was only one of the grounds on which Musset mere vigorously
opposed their affair. Initially they shared their literary interests, but the strong
chemistry between them inevitably ended up in passionate intimacy. Before Sand meets
Musset, Kurys shows her reading to a literary salon, stating that men were unconcerned
with the physical pleasure of women. Musset, and the heated passion generated between the
two, surely changed her mind. "You taught me to love, heart and soul," she says
later on.
They travel to Venice together, but even en route, Musset reverts to
philandering ways. He is revealed to be a whoremonger and a gambler and he dabbles in
opium as well. He is also portrayed as alternately abusive and repentant towards Sand;
it's hard not to think after a while that his mother was right in opposing the
relationship. Not, of course, because of anything wrong with Sand as she would have it,
but because her son is an irresponsible, spoiled and self-indulgent adolescent
masquerading in the body of an adult.
While allowing Sand shelter in the arms of an Italian doctor, Kurys
depicts her as consistent in her love for Musset, despite his intolerable behavior. The
portrayal of this strong, independent woman remaining so attached under the circumstances
is, in part perhaps, meant to be a reflection of the over-the-top romanticism of the
period, the exaltation of passion above all else. (Sand doesn't fit the contemporary
picture of the abused wife unable and unwilling to split with her partner.) But, the
repeated breakups and reconciliations that stretch the film unnecessarily beyond a length
appropriate to its content becomes tiresome. The imbalance in the relationship unbalances
the portrait of Sand as well.
Nonetheless, there's much to bolster the proceedings, especially the
performance of Juliette Binoche (Chocolat,
Alice and Martin) as Sand;
she emanates both the intelligence and the passion of the writer with an edge of wit
always present. Benoit Magimel (The
Piano Teacher, A Single Girl)
makes a convincingly passionate lover as well as an annoying heel. Costuming by French
couturier Christian Lacroix is a knockout and period interiors are handsomely realized.
Indeed, all the production values are first rate; it's the script here that undermines the
film, getting befuddled in its characterizations as it begins to seem as long as the two year affair which is its subject.
- Arthur Lazere
