It can't be too much fun being Zabu Breitman. This slim, female Orson Welles very possibly wakes each morning with the knowledge that she is unlikely to even equal let alone eclipse her very first film as a director, the exquisite Se Souvenirs des belles choses which has to be, no contest, one of the all-time great directing debuts, male or female any nationality. On the credit side unlike Welles she did not immediately become persona non grata in the Producer/Financier set which means she is still able to get funding to turn out excellent films like Someone I Loved (though the cynic in me suspects that in return for Japanese backing she had to agree to a certain amount of location shooting in Hong Kong, else why feature the city when anywhere would have sufficed). It's a typically French gentle story of love and regret acted superbly by all four main characters. At the start Daniel Auteuil drives out of Paris with a woman who could well be his daughter and two children. They drive to a second home in the country and settle in for a long stay. It turns out that the woman is Auteuil's daughter-in-law, who has been dumped without discussion by her husband and his so. We then get to the heart of the film as Auteuil tells her how he, as a married man and father, fell hopelessly in love whilst on a business trip to Hong Kong. The woman in question was the French-born translator and was undoubtedly the love of his life. The affair lasted for several years but he opted to remain with his wife rather than follow his heart. And that's it, folks, but what a story and what a story teller is Zabou. Outstanding.
Review of Je l'aimais
