Heartbeat (1968) User Reviews

Torn between two lovers

[jotix100 · 6/10 · 18 July 2010]

Poor Francoise Sagan, her novels sold million copies all over the world, yet her work never translated successfully to the screen. With only one, or two exceptions, her novels were almost always about young women involved with older, and richer men. There are diversions in the form of younger men that serve as a distraction, but ultimately, all the books ended badly. Unhappy conclusions were a must for any of Ms. Sagan's novels.

"La chamade", or "Heartbeat", a 1968 adaptation of her novel of the same title, in the hands of director Alain Cavalier is only a film which showcased the beauty of Catherine Deneuve in all her cinematic glory. It is a film that has little content. It does not involve us the way it should have because the characters that are not real.

We are asked to believe that the stunning Lucille who is Charles' mistress decides to leave him for Antoine, a struggling writer, that cannot give her the luxury which she is accustomed. Charles, on the other hand, while understanding the attraction, would have probably let her enjoy herself on the side, as long as she came back to him. Lucille makes the mistake of leaving one lover for another to horrible results.

Catherine Deneuve is an icy kind of actress. She is one of the most beautiful faces of the French cinema, but as far as projecting any emotions, she always came up short in that department. It must have been hard for directors to cast anyone opposite her because of the coolness she always brought to her roles. Michel Picoli, a great actor has the unfortunate task of playing her older lover, Charles, something that does not happen because there was no chemistry between him and his co-star. Irene Tunk, who was Mrs. Alain Cavalier, a former Miss France, is also a sight for sore eyes, but alas, she has nothing to do in the film. Roger Van Hool, the Belgian actor appears as Antoine.

The copy we saw recently had an amazing quality and it looks as pristine today, as when it was first released. The cinematography of Pierre Lhomme is one of the best things in the film.

HEARTBEAT (Alain Cavalier, 1968) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 23 August 2006]

Slick but rather tedious romantic melodrama from a novel by Francoise Sagan, despite the presence of two of European cinema's most representative - and durable - actors in Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli (who've been teamed a staggering 16 times throughout the years but their best moment, surely, was in Luis Bunuel's sublime BELLE DE JOUR [1967]).

With a plot that's too thin - and familiar - to sustain its length, the film depends entirely on its two stars: Piccoli, however, has played this role far too often (including THE GAME IS OVER [1966] which preceded it; see review above) but Deneuve - at the height of her beauty - is as captivating as ever. Still, Roger Van Hool is vapid as Deneuve's young lover - which rather prevents audience involvement in the couple's plight!

Sagan's novels can not be well expressed visually

[zygimantas · 5/10 · 20 August 2012]

I am prompted to review not based on any passionate feelings for this movie. I tend to agree with those reviewers who did not "feel" Deneuve's portrayal of Lucile in the movie and thus, I think this movie failed. I think in fact all of Sagan's adaptations to film have failed.

But that is why I am adding my review, to disagree with the reviewer who called the original novel "silly." In fact, there is nothing more beautiful and poignant, simultaneously light and heavy, light and dark, as a Francoise Sagan novel. I don't say she is one of the greatest or most profound of French writers even in the 20th century, but she is so far from being silly it offends the senses to hear it; she has a perfect grip of the human heart and its dance with the human mind, and a magnificent grasp of phrasing, enough to convey profundity and round the most incidental of characters that most writers would allow to lay flat.

As this is not a place to review the novel, I will only say in contrast to the film that Lucile's struggle between Antoine and Charles is not passionless nor can it be summed up simply as a "heart vs. head" conflict, although I appreciate this is the easiest way to summarize and is not inaccurate. In short, it gets a 5 from me and not a zero because it is so faithful to the book, and yet, it gets a 5 and not a 10 because (I suspect) the direction and performances were inadequate to the task of explaining the relationships, the everyday, everyman experiences of love &/or heartbreak that Sagan originally put down so masterfully.

Beautiful Deneuve and the compulsion and emptiness of living with too much leisure and wealth.

[Rod Evan · 8/10 · 29 December 2003]

Courtesy of MGM Movie Channel I was at last allowed to see one of the best popular films of 1968 in France. 'La Chamade'. This is a disgracefully neglected film which manages in a not too dissimilar way to Antonioni's 'Blow Up' to show the compulsion and emptiness of living with too much leisure and wealth.

Deneuve is at her most beautiful and along with 'Belle de Jour' this must be one of her more complex roles of the period. The extraordinary thing about the film is that the characters roam the bars and go to parties and chic restaurants and musical evenings seemingly oblivious to the political trauma that was happening in 1968.

If memory serves me right Sagan wrote 'La Chamade' before the events of May '68 and for all I know the film may have been completed before the month of May, but in hindsight the facts that we now know cast a long shadow over the lives of these beautiful people consumed by their own selfish desires. A small masterpiece.

She's so uninteresting...

[dbdumonteil · 17 March 2004]

...Françoise Sagan!It takes a genius of a director to successfully adapt one of her airport novels.It happened once with "bonjour tristesse" ,because of M.Preminger and his interprets Deborah Kerr,Jean Seberg and David Niven.It never happened again .

It is cinema with the feeling and sincerity of cellophane .The terrible human problem which tortures the heroine is: can money buy happiness? Shall I live with a young reporter or shall I stay with a still handsome greybeard ? Shall I have to work and give up my idleness?You've got the picture?

Catherine Deneuve achieves a minor tour de force by turning this futile superficial boring young girl into an endearing character.That does not make "la chamade " a good film for all that.As far as the French bourgeoisie depictions are concerned,you'll always be better off with Claude Chabrol 's works,particularly "la femme infidèle" (1968)

Alain Cavalier began quite well with two political movies "l'insoumis"(1964) and "le combat dans l'île"(1961),then got lost before redeeming himself in the eighties with "un étrange voyage" (1980) and chiefly his wonderful "Thérèse"(1986) which will probably remain his masterpiece.

dull and duller

[tintin-23 · 3/10 · 14 January 2008]

A heart that beats "the chamade" (la chamade is a particular drum beat) is a heart ready to surrender to the charms of an adversary. This film is a poor adaptation of Françoise Sagan's tedious novel of the same name. In the novel, Sagan, faithful to her fetish themes of indolence, gilded youth, easy money, and fast cars, depicts in unflattering terms the superficiality and immorality of the French high bourgeois society of the 1960s. Sagan and Chevalier collaborated on the thin, tiresome screenplay. The three main characters are so flatly drawn that even two high-caliber actors such as Deneuve and Piccoli must continuously struggle through tepid platitudes and situational predictability throughout. Roger Van Hool as Deneuve's young lover is so insipid as to effectively block any audience sympathy for the story. We are quickly bored with the comings and goings of these three uninteresting characters, and we don't care about what happens by the film's end.

Of course, I know of many fates worse than spending 100 minutes watching the camera caress La Belle Catherine -- a forty-years younger one, as well -- but if that's all the film has to offer, then ultimately it's just not worth watching.

Flawless Beauty and Foolish Men

[DAHLRUSSELL · 8/10 · 15 November 2006]

Catherine Deneuve is one of film's all time great beauties who has also become a very fine actress. At this point in her career, she was still blank but beautiful. Her Director put this to good use, casting her as a woman who is pampered, spoiled, a woman for whom life has given her so much she is completely lost and has no idea what she really wants, but drifts from vague whim to whim. Of course, she is such a beauty that she is perfect casting for this kind of woman who has men falling over themselves just to light her cigarette, and the kind of jealousy and possessive controlling impulses beauty brings out in men.

Lightly handled, this film is a visual discussion of the true nature of love, and the tradeoffs we make in finding the right relationship. Money and stability, passion and poverty are contrasted, with some surprising revelations about what makes a love meaningful and lasting. Yves St. Laurent supplies the really amazing wardrobe for the sequences of wealth ( I counted at least 5 really flawlessly coutured coats), which seems at first to make this film very glossy and superficial and "what will she wear next" – but this supplies our framework of seeing how unimportant these things are to her, and also builds a great contrast for the sections of everyday financial struggles.

This film is greater than the sum of it's parts. Great costumes, some postcard style cinematography, and a fine performance by Roger Van Hool as the obsessed Antoine, and an exceptional, nuanced performance by Michel Piccoli as Charles. (He and Deneuve had made several films together by this point, which augments the familiar feeling between them.)

Because DeNeuve is still young here, and the essential capricious coldness of her character, this film does not supply as much emotional connection or depth as it could. We have only Piccoli as a window for that, so this film becomes a man's view of the beautiful woman they adore, and a fine representation of their incomprehension of women. Historically, falling in step with "free love" and early feminism, it is a great representation of that special time when men really could not figure out what women wanted… because women were still trying to figure it out themselves.

It was very difficult for me to care in the least for these people.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 14 September 2013]

I will admit it up front that I am old fashioned. I believe in monogamy and many old fashioned values. So, when I see a film like "La Chamade", I have a great difficulty enjoying it. After all, the folks in this film seem awfully amoral and selfish. So why should I care about them and their petty problems?!

The film begins with Lucile (Catherine Deneuve) being Charles' (Michel Piccoli) mistress. She lives well, as Charles is rich and indulgent--he obviously loves her. However, when she meets Antoine (Roger Van Hool), she falls for him and decides to keep both men as her lovers. But, Antoine is the jealous sort and after leaving his wife, he insists that Lucile leave Charles--which she eventually does. However, now that she no longer has all of Charles' money, she needs to work-and work is not for pretty people like her. So, she sells off all her jewels and just lounges about doing whatever she wants. Eventually, she becomes pregnant and bored with Antoine. So, she gets an abortion and returns to Charles. And, considering how nice Charles has been about all this, you wonder why he wants her back (apart from all their hot sex).

When I write all this about the plot, I realize exactly why I disliked the film--the main character, Lucile, is morally bankrupt. She doesn't like to work, mistakes sex for love and just seems very shallow and self-absorbed. So why should I care about her and her petty problems? I dunno. It's a shame, as this IS a beautiful film--nicely filmed and the actors were quite food. But when the story involves people you cannot relate to and seem so selfish, you aren't left with much.

Beautifully Costumed Contemporary French Melodrama

[genet-1 · 10/10 · 7 May 2009]

For three years, the beautiful Lucile has lived with wealthy Paris businessman Charles, for whom she is a lovely ornament,and an admired figure among their rich, leisured circle.

Lucile lives for pure sensation; the best clothes (all by Yves St Laurent), chic restaurants, summers in St Tropez. Her hedonistic character is symbolised by her pleasure in putting her head or hands out the window of her sports car and enjoying the rush of cool air.

After a theatre party, she's attracted to Antoine, young journalist lover of a woman in the group. Charles throws them together, gambling a brief fling will get it out of her system. But their affair becomes more serious, and common knowledge after the two argue at a formal soiree. Following this key scene, with the disapproving guests ranged silently against the couple like a tribunal that find them guilty of that most despicable of social crimes, Bad Taste, Lucile leaves Charles's mansion for Antoine's cluttered apartment.

Her new life is a shock. She has to take buses, and even work for a living,hauling files in a newspaper research library. She sells her jewels,and flirts with the idea of selling herself to a wealthy American who tries to pick her up. Her resentment of her new condition is summed up in a section of William Faulkner's SANCTUARY in which the writer unashamedly endorses a life lived for pleasure alone. She reads the passage aloud to a cafe crowded with civil servants glumly eating their lunch, and they erupt in applause.

When Lucile gets pregnant, it's Charles to whom she turns for the abortion. As the relationship with Antoine deteriorates, she ducks the grim modern play he wants her to see, and instead accompanies Charles to a concert. Dressed again in one of her St Laurent gowns (she's left fifty of them at Charles's place, perhaps suspecting she might need them again) and sipping champagne while listening to Mozart, she realises this is her true milieu. Next morning, she returns to the sleeping Antoine only to set out a single coffee cup for his breakfast, then ring him from the bar downstairs with news that it's over.

Few actresses convey sensuality more effectively than Deneuve, and in LA CHAMADE she's at her most seductive. She exudes undiluted desire when,beautifully sun-tanned, she welcomes the news that Antoine will join her in St Tropez for a mid-summer idyll. The phone call comes at a bar telephone next to the statue of a bare-breasted woman - as close as the film ever gets to nudity. Throughout, Deneuve never shows more than a leg and her shoulders. Yet even a scene where she dumps salt and hot water into a red plastic bowl to soak her sore feet carries an erotic tingle.

While Lucile is no heroine, she's the archetypal Parisienne, her self-regard justified by her beauty and style. Ironically, LA CHAMADE was made on the eve of the 1968 revolutionary "events", as the French now call them. At the time, the disappearance of Lucile and her class was confidently predicted. Like similar forecasts in 1789, it was premature. Today, Paris is more and more filled with such beautiful creatures, and Deneuve herself continues to flourish. Vive la France, and Vive la Deneuve!

1968 film as dull as 1968

[eldino33 · 3/10 · 19 October 2009]

Mark Twain once said that anyone who picked a cat up by the tail learns never to pick a cat up by the tail again. In this film, no one picks the cat up by the tail, therefore no one seems to learn much. It is painful to see an actress of Deneuve's quality going from scene to scene without intensity. Most the time she is either walking, walking, walking or drinking, drinking, drinking. To me, she is simply unconvincing as lover in this film. Except for the first few scenes, one feels one is looking through a photo album haplessly put together. There seems to be very little passion in Lucille falling out of love for Charles, into love for Antione, and out of love for Antione. Consider this: Perhaps the film is a victim of the times. The intellectualism of the Beatniks of the 1950s and the rebellion of the hippies of the early 1960s was morphing into the leisure suits of the 1970s. And the logic of the film seems askew. Can an expensively kept partner of a very wealthy member of the upper class find love and happiness with a poor immature writer living in a one-room apartment in the projects? It all seems too unlikely. All film fans have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but you'd have to live on another planet to accept the plot of this film. I can't recommend this movie.

first class nostalgia...typical silly novel but done beautifully

[filmalamosa · 8/10 · 31 March 2012]

Lucille (Catherine De Neuve age 28) is the mistress of Charles (Picolli age 46) she lives the beautiful carefree life of luxury. She meets Antoine a young artist (real age 30) and starts an affair with him. Charles is willing to allow it but Antoine is jealous.

De Neuve lives awhile with Antoine and predictably it doesn't work. She epitomizes that carefree 60s spirit that another reviewer analyzed correctly as women not really knowing what they wanted (and they never found it).

In any case you watch this movie for 60s nostalgia (all the Citroen DSs) not intellectual content and for that purpose if is first class even if it is an airport novel adapted to movie.

The actors were perfect for the roles they play...Antoine a little too Anthony Perkins looking to be totally handsome...and Charles the perfect rich sugar Daddy. De Neuve of course the prize.

Not so bad..

[sb-47-608737 · 8/10 · 14 May 2019]

I didn't find this as bad as some of the reviewers have made this out to be. Of course not having read the novel - (only could find the plot of the novel, from several web sites), I can't really compare what the novelist envisioned versus what this movie brought out. And in addition to it, I will rather do my interpretation of it.

Lucille (Catherine) is the mistress of a rich man Charles (Picoli), living the life of not only luxury but over indulgence. Charles not only over indulges her (having made a croquet field in at his home, for her to practice her below-par - for others, not for him, game - but also doesn't make any demand on her, letting her in fact to live a life of her own way. There is a few hints, that Lucille is mistress by choice, happy to have an unencumbered life, rather than been tied with Charles, despite him not making any demand, even of fidelity on her. Even she walks out on him, with the young, but poor, lover (Antoine), he doesn't try to bribe her back, and even extend all the help and company to her, when she needed. The young lover however is almost in opposite pole, not only in age but in mind too. He wants Lucille to live 'his' life. Even coercing her to fall in line - getting a job, not aborting the baby, watching a horror movie (despite her dislike for it)....

In the end the question is raised - for her as well as viewers - what is true love - or who of the two men is the true lover - unlike what the movie, or rather the critics and the synopsis seem to indicate, the wealth, might be a factor, but not THE factor, which tilts the balance. It all boils down to the physical attraction, which is mutual, versus the all effacing care. And I sympathize with Lucille's choice - who, in the words of her favourite author (in the movie at least), Faulkner - decided that "True love isn't because, but it is despite..." and went ahead with it.

Of course unlike the novel - in the movie it isn't shown where Lucille is heading to. She has called one of them to break off, but that doesn't rally mean she is going to the other, she could as well be walking off, to be "Alone" ? As the novelist herself did in real life - and a few years before this novel was written ? Well there was a difference though - with the young lover(husband) - she did have a child - didn't abort it. The character, as portrayed by Catherine, is free and individualistic (different from feminist) , hence even the third option existed.

Some of the reviews talk about monogamy - but it is interesting to note here - both the men were so. Even when she had walked out, replacement wasn't sought or thought. With a gender reversal of characters - would still it be a monogamy issue ?