"The Widow of St. Pierre" is more about love than it is about justice, if for no other reason than that the former is more strikingly original. It's rare to come across so convincing an unconditional love as that which exists between Madame La (Juliette Binoche) and the Captain (Daniel Auteuil). But this not to say that doubts, upon a closer look, don't enter into assessing how high the romance.
One unusual aspect of this rare relationship is its triangular nature. For Madame La definitely experiences some momentary temptations in Neel's (her protege prisoner) close physical presence. She fends them off but the question remains: isn't this intimacy a bit too risky? Would Neel's less studded partner in crime (disposed of early) even glimpse the light outside his prison cell? But the Captain takes these sensuous overtones in stride, even appreciating them as a widening of his wife's character and of their own love for each other. He trusts her to the end, accepts her "just the way she is," and answers his righteous critics: "I let my wife choose," "she knows what she's doing." Of course, how a career military officer can have this much perspicacity about women is another interesting question. Is his unconditional love made easier by his wife's magical lure? Is his faith in his wife real, or is it too idealized?
And then there's the question of equality. A union based on unconditional love signifies a diminishment of male social power and a lift in female independence. But the Captain is as decidedly male as Madame La is decidedly female. He gives orders, leads his soldiers, runs the barracks, is commanding even around his wife, and fends off insults and innuendos about her a little too gallantly--and provokingly. But his psychic alliance with masculinity is most telling in his fatalism. (This pivotal characteristic is shared by Neel, whose path parallels his own). It's a concept that puts him above ordinary men, and ordinary reality. But the heroic mode means a willingness to absent himself from his wife, and must impact their present relationship with a fatalistic tinge. In other words, he indicates a preference for the code of honor over a world-bound committed marriage. Sound familiar? Like Neel, he refuses the active escape route that Madame La lies out for him, preferring to accept the dictates of a tyrannical justice system. All this suggests a passivity which is more characteristic of the drama of romantic love than the real thing. Could Madame La be more the timeless muse than an actual wife?
To a lesser degree Madam La also eschews action, because she's, to a large extent, stuck in the female sphere. She's instinctual, sensuous, liberal, self-sacrificing, and solicitous for victims and the poor. Although she is childless, she's nevertheless very motherly and nurturing around children. Also, she could be publicly working for a lesser (Neel's crime=manslaughter) criminal charge--on a small island without a guillotine or an executioner, or at least referencing the life of her protege's vicitm, but she prefers to reform and educate a man sentenced to death. But as excellent a teacher as she is, there is one thing she cannot teach him and that is the flaw inherent in fatalism. Her activist attempt to free both her husband and Neel from their certain fates, constitutes her one single break with her female parameters. But she has asserted her own will, courage, and independence to no avail. A prisoner's honor, in this case, is like a soldier's honor: bigger than she is. But despite its casting a shadows over her life and marriage, and knowing that love and fatalism cannot co-exist, she has the willingness to continue, to stand with the Captain, and to prod Neel to the end. The noose, and the blaze of glory spell out romance as cinematic or story book but to Madame La these mean the loss of a close friend, a husband, and for herself, a sentence of eternal widowhood, the unreality of love in absentia, and a retreat into the essence of womanhood: elevated, disembodied, mythic.
One unusual aspect of this rare relationship is its triangular nature. For Madame La definitely experiences some momentary temptations in Neel's (her protege prisoner) close physical presence. She fends them off but the question remains: isn't this intimacy a bit too risky? Would Neel's less studded partner in crime (disposed of early) even glimpse the light outside his prison cell? But the Captain takes these sensuous overtones in stride, even appreciating them as a widening of his wife's character and of their own love for each other. He trusts her to the end, accepts her "just the way she is," and answers his righteous critics: "I let my wife choose," "she knows what she's doing." Of course, how a career military officer can have this much perspicacity about women is another interesting question. Is his unconditional love made easier by his wife's magical lure? Is his faith in his wife real, or is it too idealized?
And then there's the question of equality. A union based on unconditional love signifies a diminishment of male social power and a lift in female independence. But the Captain is as decidedly male as Madame La is decidedly female. He gives orders, leads his soldiers, runs the barracks, is commanding even around his wife, and fends off insults and innuendos about her a little too gallantly--and provokingly. But his psychic alliance with masculinity is most telling in his fatalism. (This pivotal characteristic is shared by Neel, whose path parallels his own). It's a concept that puts him above ordinary men, and ordinary reality. But the heroic mode means a willingness to absent himself from his wife, and must impact their present relationship with a fatalistic tinge. In other words, he indicates a preference for the code of honor over a world-bound committed marriage. Sound familiar? Like Neel, he refuses the active escape route that Madame La lies out for him, preferring to accept the dictates of a tyrannical justice system. All this suggests a passivity which is more characteristic of the drama of romantic love than the real thing. Could Madame La be more the timeless muse than an actual wife?
To a lesser degree Madam La also eschews action, because she's, to a large extent, stuck in the female sphere. She's instinctual, sensuous, liberal, self-sacrificing, and solicitous for victims and the poor. Although she is childless, she's nevertheless very motherly and nurturing around children. Also, she could be publicly working for a lesser (Neel's crime=manslaughter) criminal charge--on a small island without a guillotine or an executioner, or at least referencing the life of her protege's vicitm, but she prefers to reform and educate a man sentenced to death. But as excellent a teacher as she is, there is one thing she cannot teach him and that is the flaw inherent in fatalism. Her activist attempt to free both her husband and Neel from their certain fates, constitutes her one single break with her female parameters. But she has asserted her own will, courage, and independence to no avail. A prisoner's honor, in this case, is like a soldier's honor: bigger than she is. But despite its casting a shadows over her life and marriage, and knowing that love and fatalism cannot co-exist, she has the willingness to continue, to stand with the Captain, and to prod Neel to the end. The noose, and the blaze of glory spell out romance as cinematic or story book but to Madame La these mean the loss of a close friend, a husband, and for herself, a sentence of eternal widowhood, the unreality of love in absentia, and a retreat into the essence of womanhood: elevated, disembodied, mythic.