Marie's Song

“"Marie" (Sylvie Testud) lives at the home of a rather aloof Countess (Carola Regnier) who spends much of her time looking out of the window of her stately pile watching the peasantry go about their business. The arrival of the handsome young "Auguste" (Bastian Trost) promises a little to liven things up for her, but he seems to spend much of his time learning his Latin (badly) and being beaten by his tutor. Then a dashing soldier (Martin Feifel) shows up and almost overnight the dynamic of this respectable and dull idyll is irreversibly altered. Now there's no doubt that this is a stylishly crafted piece of cinema with plenty of attention to the detail of early 19th century Prussian life, but with virtually no dialogue there is virtually no characterisation and so as the story becomes darker, it's left to some uncomfortable to watch visuals to sell us a narrative that's remarkably sterile - despite all of the varieties of passion it supposedly evokes. The scenario itself is all perfectly plausible in times when the menfolk were off fighting in the war and the women left behind being vulnerable and horny, too - but with the possible exception of Feifel whose character was delivered in a manner that made him fairly easy to mistrust and dislike, I just felt the rest of this was more of a two-dimensional documentary with a rousing score, some elaborate costumes, an unique role for a tiny frog and some smashed pot plants. By half way through, I almost wished it were entirely free of speech and that we were just given the odd inter-title to remind us who was who, why we possibly ought to care and though I did think there were elements of the ingenious to the closing few scenes I wasn't really ever engaged. It looks good though.”