The Piano Teacher

Bark on, bark on, my most vigilant hounds!
Let me not rest when dark slumber abounds!
With my dreams I have reached an end,
No more time have I with sleepers to spend

                                                                    Franz Schubert, Die Winterreise

This composer, whom the titular character in this film describes in absolute terms as “ugly,” was uncompromisingly devoted to his art, perhaps in no small part because he saw little value in a material life of hedonism and wealth. Schubert's perception of an artist working night and day to achieve minor personalized goals in his lifetime that will only become global imprints well after death suggests not only a blind faith in the redemption of the soul, but also a disheartening contempt for this one life he has been given. 

This quandary – art versus life, sacrifice versus immediate gratification, profundity versus superficial banality – is as old as life and art themselves, and one that plagues Erika (the sensational Isabelle Huppert), a teacher and lover of music. Erika is extremely gifted in her field and, like so many artists, as demanding of others as she is of herself.  She is a recluse, living with her mother (Annie Girardot) and socializing with no one else, suppressing the quiet pain of having a father rotting away in an asylum (“the twilight of the mind,” she calls it), unpleasant with her students, of whom she can realistically expect little, and evasively bellicose towards her colleagues. So far, Erika fits an artistic stereotype all too well: the insufferable genius who demands perfection in everyone and everything and is left bitter by the gross negligence of a world sworn to mediocrity and passableness. There is, of course, a little more to her than that – and what exactly that little more entails has stirred up a great deal of controversy. Erika has a curiously unhinged side to her that manifests itself in pornographic and sadomasochistic whims, the likes of which have no real place in an artistic work and the reason why this film has been considered a bit of a hybrid.  No need to go into details, but suffice it to say that Erika cannot really relate to anything except her music (even her mother is just another obstacle to her routine). And her music is about endless practice, endless striving towards perfection, and the vast majority of life is spent chasing that perfection, with the possibility of attaining it seemingly just around the corner. If this description sounds like a metaphor for something else, then the second half of the film will make perfect sense.

It is precisely at the midway point of the film that she gives in to her desires for Walter (Benoît Magimel), a handsome young prodigy who also has feelings for her of a much more conventional sort. When she first plays before him, the long waits for Walter’s face to react tell you he will be a factor in the film. It is when he first plays, however, that we understand the twisted underside to Erika’s psyche: she cannot bear to look at him, not out of disgust but out of boredom. Erika, you see, has another aspect common to many artists: she is interminably bored when not engaged in her own artistic pursuits. It’s not even that nothing else matters, but that nothing else could possibly matter. But she has urges and physical lacunae that have never really been addressed, and her haplessness in that sliver of life called sexual interaction is as glaring as her art is elevated. When she hurts herself, it’s not for the trite excuse, “I hurt myself because I forgot what it was like to feel something,” but rather the “I don’t remember ever touching anything except piano keys.” At no point does Erika, who is a truly cultured and intelligent person, seem fake or conjured up from the back of some deranged and lonely mind. Yet at the same time she is also an abstraction, a piece of music that someone wrote and commanded to live, a Frankenstein sonata.  And when the film, based on a novel by this equally controversial Austrian Nobel Prize winner, asks her to live, it spirals swiftly down into a painful exchange of bruised egos and, well, bruises. 

Much has been made of the sex and violence in The Piano Teacher, directed by one of Jelinek’s most famous fellow countrymen, although it’s considerably less than the orgy of sexploitations and sexplosions scripted into your average action film. I have not read Jelinek’s novel and cannot say I am maneuvering my shelf components in anticipation of such a purchase, but the character names reveal a novelist’s touch. Walter’s last name is Klemmer, or, in German, “the one who clamps or traps,” and his first name, when pronounced in French (apart from some songs by Schubert, the film is exclusively in French but filmed in Austria with Germanic names, German street signs, and so forth) does not sound very different from “Voltaire.” Klemmer is also the surname of a famous jazz musician, whom Jelinek may have had in mind when she wrote her novel in the early 1980s, although this is debatable. More important is that another of Erika’s students is called Nápravník, who was a Czech conductor and was mentioned in this famous novel. In Czech (Jelinek is of Czech descent), nápravník is related to the words “correctional” and “corrector,” suggesting both a prison and a teacher, as Erika is certainly both. Yet Erika is not some sort of aspiring dominatrix, nor does she reflect Austrian society's alleged emphasis on discipline and excellence (you can foresee down what darksome path that leads), but a woman terrifyingly alone and closing the gap on middle age. Somehow her soul’s torment is supposed to be mitigated by a set of rather banal urges, when that is precisely her only quality that has nothing to do with art. But Huppert's performance is so outstanding that we try to battle through the film despite our repulsion. Maybe the last twenty minutes or so are best watched on fast forward; then again, perhaps there is no better way to experience Erika's slow burn than to endure what she endures down to the final frame. As one of her students sings (from Schubert's Der Wegweiser) in perfect summation:

But I have done nothing so wrong
That I should avoid the human throng.
What kind of foolish desire
Drives me tow'rd the wastelands' mire?

Caché

There is a lovely French term, bourgeois-bohème (often abbreviated as "bobo"), used to describe someone of privileged living but rebellious, often intrepid ideals, which can be taken as either a compliment or plain evidence of what happens to people when they become financially successful (an American journalist unwittingly created the same portmanteau). The whiff of money and a carefree life are often enough to corrupt those who were rotten to begin with. But for those of us with no interest in what holes money can punch through the human soul, the price is much greater. Most people will succumb to money as most people will succumb to the allure of sensuality; after all, money and sex are the two easiest things in the world to enjoy. The bobos of the world are, however, caught between what they believe in and what is expected of them given their societal status: they will be sensitive to any charges of selling out, but equally empowered by the thought of using their influence to do good instead of buying furs and patronizing boutiques. In France, a country that still reads and was awarded for its diligence with the latest Nobel Prize winner, television has all the usual farces, police shows, and imbecilic pseudo-news programs, as well as something that the United States lacks – literary debates. As pretentious as they sound and sadistically boring to viewers without a good command of both spoken and written French, these shows are a mainstay of French culture even though many of the works discussed are not worth retaining in the dark forests of our memory (as most books, given the glut of mediocrity on the market, are better left untouched). Yet the mere fact of their existence is a very bobo event: expensive television (often prime) time oddly paired with the highest form of human inquiry. How very telling, then, that the host of such a program is the subject of this remarkable film.

Our hero – if that is really the right word – is Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a plain French name for a plain French mind. Georges moderates a very popular literary program on television and his comfortable house in Paris's thirteenth arrondissement has wall-to-wall shelves of those wonderful Gallimard and Minuit editions so familiar to students of France. His wife Anne (a suddenly heavier Juliette Binoche) and twelve-year-old son Pierrot waft in and out of Georges's everyday routine, but his primary focus is the maintenance of his own golden reputation. This is a typically bobo concern: those who believe or once believed in bettering the world often see their success as a justification of their ideals, even if few of those ideals were preserved during their ascent. So Georges and Anne engage in their habitual dinner polemics with their guests – including one friend, Pierre (the late Daniel Duval), who clearly has eyes for Anne – until a strange package arrives. As is common for strange packages there is no return address, nor any clear indication of how it might have arrived on the Laurents' doorstep. Such an event is all the more disconcerting since the package only contains a cassette, and that cassette contains nothing but handheld footage of the house at whose doorstep it was left. Georges is visibly disturbed; Anne thinks one of Georges's loyal viewers has decided to stalk him; Pierrot is nowhere to be found; and nothing more is said until, of course, a second package with more footage appears a few days later. This time we get more information: a child's drawing of a stick figure spitting out what really does look like blood. Anne is confused and now suspects a prank; Georges, however, is terrified. 

Childhood memories swirl and descend upon Georges like some serpentine mist and we begin to peer into his nightmares. He is perhaps six or seven with another boy his age, a boy from North Africa, a boy by the name of Majid. Majid's parents, we learn in snippets, were Algerian farmhands working for the Laurents when they were slain during this notorious Paris massacre. As a last favor, Majid was to be adopted by his parents' employers – something to which Georges, apparently obsessed with his reputation from an early age, was vehemently opposed. What happened then is revealed towards the end of the film, but Georges feels impelled enough by his conscience to track down Majid in his rent-controlled apartment and confront him about the matter. Majid denies any involvement, Georges leaves, and, soon enough, his nightmares become more visceral. A young Majid is now seen spitting blood and beheading a rooster, and in general doing everything he can to seem unadoptable, which makes about as much sense as Georges's claims to Anne that nothing is bothering him and he has taken no action on the tapes. It is here that Georges's true personality emerges. He crosses a street without looking and almost collides with a West African speeding along on his bicycle. Instead of acknowledging their mutual insouciance, perhaps more on his part as the pedestrian, Georges fulminates against this young immigrant who he feels does not belong in his world. Another tape appears and the secret is out: it is a film of Georges and Majid in Majid's apartment. Anne demands details and Georges provides the story of Majid's parents, his threats against Georges, and his eventual placement in an orphanage, all of which doesn't persuade Anne and shouldn't persuade us. Pierrot suddenly goes missing and Georges returns to Majid's apartment to accuse him of kidnapping. How perfect that as Georges's only son vanishes, we finally see Majid's child. A handsome, well-raised, and extremely polite young man, he harbors more than a little resentment towards Georges. Father and son both claim that Georges is way off base even as the son seems to be hiding behind a smirk; Pierrot returns the next day and says he spent the night at a friend's, although his parents never quite ask which friend; then Majid beckons Georges to visit him one last time. And perhaps we should stop our revelations right there.

The brilliance of Caché (for which this earlier Haneke film serves as a study) lies in the confluence of its details and human intentions. Georges and Majid do represent two strands of society, the affluent native (Auteuil, ironically enough, was actually born in Algiers) and struggling immigrant whose only viable chance of advancement resides in his children; Majid's son is a proud North African yet completely French; and the times when Georges could cross a Parisian street and not encounter an immigrant on the other side are long gone. As a survey of what has become of our globalized world the film remains insightful, correct, and admonitory – yet this is all of secondary importance. Its true beauty is reflected in Georges's eyes, the portals to his soul and conscience, portals which his mother (Anne Girardot) knows have not always been the upholders of the ideals he now espouses. Is it a coincidence that, as every review will inform you, caché is French for "hidden"? Or that, in Arabic, Majid means "glorious" or "exalted"? Two highly controversial final scenes that will be discussed for years might suggest otherwise. But then again, only Georges can tell us for sure.

Nerval, "Octavie (part 2)"

The conclusion to a short story ("Octavia") by this French writer. You can read the original here.

"But where before had this image appeared to me? Ah, I have already told you that! It was in Naples, three years ago. I had an encounter one night near the Villa Reale with a young girl that looked like you, a pious creature whose art was to weave gilded embroideries to adorn her church. In spirit she seemed lost; I took her home although she spoke to me about a lover she had in the Swiss Guard and who she was afraid might drop by. Nevertheless she did not hesitate to confess that I pleased her more greatly. What should I tell you? That whole evening I lost myself to reverie and headiness and imagined that this woman, whose language I could barely understand, was actually you come to me in enchanted form from up above. Why should I hush up this adventure and the bizarre delusion that my soul accepted without any pain, especially after a few glasses of foamy lacryma Christi poured for me at dinner? The room which I entered had something mystical either by chance or by the particular selection of objects it contained. A black Madonna cloaked in rags, whose old finery had been entrusted to my hostess for restoration, was sitting on a chest of drawers next to a bed with baize green curtains; a figure of Saint Rosalie wreathed in roses seemed from afar to be protecting the cradle of a child; the walls white with lime were decorated with old paintings of the four elements depicting the mythological divinities. Add to this a fine assortment of brilliant fabrics, artificial flowers, and Etruscan vases; then mirrors surrounding one copper light reflected so splendidly, and a Treatise on divination and dreams that made me think that my companion was a sorceress or at least a gypsy.

"A pleasant old woman with solemn features would come and go, bringing us things. I think it had to be her mother! And I, pensive as ever, never took my eyes off her nor said a word – she who could not stop reminding me of you.

"And this woman kept repeating to me: 'Are you sad?' And I responded: 'Do not talk. I can hardly understand what you are saying.' Both listening to and speaking Italian tired me out immensely. 'Oh!' she said. 'I know how to speak differently.' And suddenly she broke into a language that I had never heard before. Sonorous and guttural syllables, twitterings full of charm; doubtless an ancient tongue: Hebrew, Syriac, I know not. She smiled at my surprise and went over to the chest of drawers. From here she took out some costume jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, a tiara. Putting on the jewelry there, she returned to the table and remained serious for a long time. The old woman came back in and seeing her thus, began laughing vociferously and said to me, I believe, that this what she looked like at celebrations. At this point the child awoke and began to cry. The two women ran over to the cradle, and soon enough the young woman was back with me, this time holding the bambino who had just been mollified.

"She spoke to the child in the language that I had so admired, and she kept him amused with graceful prods and pokes. And I, hardly accustomed to wines burned by Vesuvius, I sensed the room and its contents spinning around. This woman of curious manners and dressed like a queen, proud and capricious, seemed to me one of the magicians of Thessaly to whom one gives one's soul for a dream. Oh, why was I not afraid to relate all of this to you? Because it was nothing more than a dream, a dream in which you alone reigned!

"I tore myself from this phantom that seduced and scared me at the same time and wandered through the deserted city until the first church bells. Then, sensing dawn's rosy fingers upon my neck, I amended my steps through the small streets behind Chiaia and began to climb up Posilippo above the grotto. Arriving at the summit, I walked around gazing at the already-blue sea, the city emitting only early morning sounds, and the islands in the bay where the sun had begun to engild the villa roofs. I was not saddened in the least. I walked with broad strides, rolled in the wet grass, but in my heart sank deeper into notions of death.

"O gods! I know not what profound sadness resided in my soul, but it was nothing more than the cruel thought that I was not loved. I had seen as the phantom of happiness, I had employed all the gifts of God, I was beneath the most beautiful sky in the world, in the presence of nature at its most perfect, at the greatest spectacle that man is allowed to behold, but four hundred leagues away from the only woman who existed for me and who knew nothing of me, not even of my existence. Not loved and without hope ever to be loved! And so it was here that I sought to seek compensation from God for my singular existence. There was but one step to take: at the location where I found myself, the mountain was cut like a cliff, the sea moaned below, blue and pure, and I would only suffer for a second. Oh, the dizziness of that thought was terrible! Twice I hurled myself down and I know not what power returned me alive to land which I grasped. No, my God, you did not create me for eternal suffering, and so I will not offend you with my death. But give me the resolution that leads some to thrones, some to glory, and others to love!"

During this strange night a rather rare phenomenon had taken place. Towards the end of the night all the openings to the house in which I found myself were lit up; a warm, sulphuric dust prevented me from breathing, and leaving my easy conquest asleep on the terrace, I set out through the alleyways which led to Château Elme, and as I clambered up the mountain, the pure morning air came and inflated my lungs. I rested sumptuously on the vine arbors of the villas and fearlessly contemplated Vesuvius, newly bound in a cupola of smoke.

And it was here that I was seized with the dizziness of which I spoke. The thought of the encounter with the English girl roused me from the fatal ideas which I had conceived. After having refreshed my mouth with one of the enormous bunches of grapes sold at the market by women vendors, I headed to Portici to visit the ruins of the Herculaneum. All the roads were sprinkled with a metallic ash. Arriving at the ruins I descended into the underground city and strolled for a time from building to building, trying to extract from each monument the secret of its past. The temple of Venus and that of Mercury spoke in vain to my imagination; they needed to be populated with the living. I went back to Portici, stopped pensively below the arbor and waited there for my stranger to come.

She was not long in coming, steering her father's wretched gait. She seized my hand and said: 'It's alright.' We hailed a small coach and went to visit Pompeii. What happiness filled me as I guided her through the silent streets and the old Roman colony! I had studied the most secret passages in advance, and when we arrived at the small temple of Isis I had the pleasure of explaining to her in faithful detail the religion and ceremonies about which I had read in Apuleius. She wanted to play the role of the Goddess herself, whereas I was tasked with the role of Osiris in which I was to explain the divine mysteries.  

Dreaming, seized by the grandeur of the ideas which we had begun to raise, I dared not speak to her of love ... She thought me so cold that I had to be reproached, and then I confessed that I no longer felt worthy of her. I related to her the story of that apparition which had awakened a past love within my heart, as well as all the sadness which had constricted me that fatal night in which the phantom of happiness had been nothing more than a lie.

Alas, all of this is very distant from us! Ten years ago, coming from the East, I went back to Naples. I went down to the hotel of Rome, and again I found the English girl. She had married a famous painter who had been stricken with complete paralysis shortly after their marriage. Lying on a daybed, he had almost no movement in his facial features apart from his large black eyes, and since he was still young he could not hope that other climes would provide relief. The poor girl had devoted her existence between caring for her father and caring for her husband, and still, her softness and virginal candor could not relieve the atrocious jealousy that seethed in the latter's soul. Nothing could ever bring him to let her go free during their walks, and he reminded me of that black giant who lurked eternally in the cavern of the djinns, with his wife continuously having to stave off sleep. O mystery of the human soul! Should one descry in such a scene the cruel marks of the vengeance of the gods?

I could only endure a day of this anguish. The boat that took me back to Marseilles carried with it like a dream the memory of this cherished apparition, and I thought that perhaps I had forsaken my happiness there. And its secret Octavia will guard with her always.

Nerval, "Octavie (part 1)"

The first part of a short story ("Octavia") by this French writer. You can read the original here.

It was in the spring of 1835 that I was overcome by a lively desire to see Italy. Every day as I rose, I breathed in the bitter scent of the alpine chestnut trees; in the evening, the waterfall of Terni, the effervescent font of the Aniene gushed forth on me alone among the hoarse backstage in a small theater. A delicious murmur like the voice of a siren rustled in my ears, as if the reeds of the Trasimeno themselves had gained sound. I had to quit Paris and leave behind a thwarted love whom I wanted to escape for distraction.

My first stop was Marseilles. Every morning I would bathe in the sea by Châteauvert, and as I swam I could espy elegant isles far off in the gulf. And within this azure bay I would meet daily with an English girl whose slender body split the green waters before me. One day this water girl, who was called Octavia, swam over reveling in the strange catch she had made: in her white hands she held a fish that she gave to me.

I could not but smile at such a gift. Nevertheless, cholera was still sweeping through the city and to avoid the quarantines, I opted for a land route. I saw Nice, Genoa and Florence; I admired both the Dome and the Baptistery, the masterpieces of Michelangelo, and the leaning tower of Pisa. Then, taking the route of Spoleto, I stopped for ten days in Rome. The Dome of Saint Peter, the Vatican, the Colosseum all appeared to be a dream. I rushed to take the post for Civitaveccha, where I would be embarking. For three days the furious sea delayed the arrival of the steamship. On this desolate beach I walked pensively, one day almost getting myself eaten alive by some dogs. On the eve of my departure a French vaudeville was showing in the local theater. A blond and spirited head attracted my attention: it was the English girl who had taken a seat in the forestage box. She was accompanying her father, who looked ill; as a cure doctors had recommended the climate of Naples.

The next morning I gleefully took up my ticket. The English girl was on the bridge which she crossed with long strides, and, impatient with the ship's slowness, she plunged her ivory teeth into a lemon peel. "Poor thing," I told her, "I'm sure you're suffering from angina pectoris and that is certainly not what you need." She fixed her eyes upon me and asked: "Who taught you that?" "The Sibyl of Tivoli," I replied without discomforting myself. "Come off it!" she answered. "I don't believe a word of that."

Saying this she gave me a tender look and I could not prevent myself from kissing her hand. "If I were stronger," she said, "I would teach you how to lie!" And she threatened me, laughing, with a thin golden loaf that she held in her hand.

Our vessel docked at Naples and we crossed the gulf between Ischia and Nisida flooded with the fires of the Orient. "If you love me," she said, "you'll wait for me tomorrow in Portici. It's not every day that I commit myself to such encounters." She disembarked at La Mole square and accompanied her father to the Hotel of Rome, while I took up residence in the Florentin. My day was spent promenading down Toledo and La Mole and visiting the pictures in the museum; in the evening I went to see the San Carlos ballet. There I bumped into the Marquis Gargallo, whom I had known in Paris, and who invited me to accompany him after the show to take tea with him and his sisters. 

I will never forget the sumptuous evening that followed. The Marquise played host to a vast room of strangers and conversation veered towards that of the précieuses, and for a time I believed myself to be in the blue salon of Rambouillet. The Marquise's sisters, as beautiful as the Three Graces, revived in me all the prestige of Ancient Greece. We talked at length about the shape of the Ninnion tablet, whether it was triangular or square. Since she was beautiful and proud like Vesta herself, the Marquise could talk with complete assurance. I left the palace with my head still spinning from this philosophical discussion and could not manage to locate my hotel. By dint of wandering through the city I was finally going to become the hero of some kind of adventure. The encounter I had that night is the subject of the following letter which I later addressed to her from whose love I had thought myself absolved when I quit Paris. 

"I am in a state of extreme inquietude. For four days now I have not seen you, or I have only seen you amidst the swirling rabble. I have something akin to a fatal presentiment. That you were sincere with me, I truly believe; that you have changed in the last few days, I know not but it is this I fear. My God! Have pity on my incertitude or you will bring us into misfortune. Nonetheless, it is I whom I blame. I was meeker and more devoted than a man should be. I surrounded my love with so many reservations; I so feared to offend you, you who had punished me so severely once before that perhaps I went too far in my tact, and perhaps you thought me cold and distant as a result. In any case, I did not spoil an important day for you, I stifled my emotions until it almost cracked open my soul, and my face was covered in a smiling mask, while all this time my heart sighed and burned. Others would not have been so swayed, and yet no one could have shown as much genuine affection nor sensed all that you were worth.

"Let us be frank: I am well aware that there are connections that a woman is loath to break without difficulty, uneasy relationships that can only be severed slowly. Did I ask you for sacrifices that were too great? Tell me your concerns and I shall understand. Your fears, your fantasies, the necessities of your position, none of this can shake the immense affection that I have for you, nor dilute the purity of my love. But together we will see what we can admit and what we must fight, and you can leave it to me to determine whether these are knots that must be cut and not undone. It might be inhuman to be bereft of liberty in such a moment because, as I have said, my life is nothing but your will, and you must know that my greatest wish is to die for you and you alone!

"To die, great God! Why does this idea come to me now and linger as if my death were precisely the equivalent of the happiness that you promise? Death! Somehow that word does not suggest anything somber to my mind. It appears crowned in pale roses just like at the end of a feast. Often I have dreamt that it would be waiting for me at the bedside of the woman I love, after happiness, after intoxication, and it would say to me: 'Young man, you've had your share of joy in this world, now come sleep, come lie down in my arms. I may not be beautiful, but I am good and safe, and it is not happiness that I will bestow upon you but eternal peace.'

Merci pour le chocolat

Chocolate manufacturers have almost invariably suffered a cruel fate in literature and film, perhaps because they come to seem as petty and decadent as their precious wares. When fictional chocolate does have some kind of positive connotation, it usually veers down that extremely dubious path of catholicon and, if applicable, aphrodisiac as well. Let's set the matter straight: chocolate is but another drug. True, it may at times so stimulate the brain that some people frankly never recover. But like alcohol, nicotine, or anything else that one allows to shape's one mood and, in so doing, one's personality, chocolate is an excuse for those who need excuses and a pleasure for those whose lives may not have enough of it. Which brings us to this quiet little mystery. 

We begin with the strangely distant Marie-Claire Muller (Isabelle Huppert) exchanging vows with the just as strangely fatigued André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc). Why Polonski and Muller as the protagonists in a French film, albeit one set in this relatively multiethnic city? Are their names intentionally foreign-sounding? Our Muller is an heiress to a formidable chocolate business, which for some Europeans is as plain an accomplishment as her surname suggests. Polonski, on the other hand, while perhaps a reference to another director, is a highly regarded classical pianist. His is also a common name – in Poland, where the most famous of all French pianists was born – and so we again face the quandary, so prevalent in Chabrol, of societal conflict, of an invisible class struggle, of art and its eternity versus the immediate gratification of gold bullion. It is well known that another contemporary director likes to employ bourgeois couples called Anne and George, or variants thereof, upon whom he can inflict the vilest of fates. But what about Chabrol? "I declare you bound, re-bound, if I may be permitted to say, in marriage," says the justice of the peace. "Please exchange rings." "They're the same ones" says Marie-Claire, who goes by Mika, which may remind us not a little of Milka, a German chocolate – but I digress. Yes, Mika and Polonski were, once upon a time, wife and man, nineteen years ago to be exact. Just before, as it were, the pianist decided for reasons that will become painfully clear to us that Mika was not his soul’s mate, and opted to marry the lovely Lisbeth who would bear him his only child Guillaume (Rodolphe Pauly) then perish in a mysterious car accident on Guillaume’s tenth birthday. A flashback near the film’s midpoint clarifies the unusual sequence of occurrences that evening, even if what this character remembers is not what the official police report contains. What we do know, and what is reflected in that brief glimpse into a foggy and mysterious past, is that even after their brief marriage and divorce, Polonski and Mika remained so close that it was at Mika’s house that the family was staying at the time, and it was in Mika’s neighborhood that Lisbeth fell asleep at the wheel and skidded off into eternal rest. And it was also Mika who gave Lisbeth the titular cocoa laced with Rohypnol mere minutes before her fatal ride.

Revealing this detail here does not spoil our film, because the same information is made available to the viewer at a proportionally earlier point in Merci pour le chocolat. It seems safe to assume that Mika killed Lisbeth, whether or not she intended to do so. Our task is to determine why she took this course of action, and what, if anything, occupies the black abyss of what is left of her soul. Even in the opening scenes, when Mika listlessly humors guests at her wedding reception then, as if to make amends for such a betrayal, a well-attended public exhibition of Lisbeth’s photography, we sense that she has long since been shunted down a very different track. At the exhibition we move quickly from one photo that appears to be a close-up of thumbs depressing a neck, to Polonski trapped in some imbecilic harangue on politics, to Mika tuning out – there is no other expression – one of her oldest employees and a dear friend of her father’s. With little forewarning – people seem to be quite used to her permanent somnambulism – she walks away and touches someone on the back who appears to be Guillaume. With that touch, which befits a lover much more than a stepmother, we somehow have the premonition that it will not be Guillaume. When it turns out indeed to be Mika's stepson, it is remarkable to note how his perturbation indicates sexual prudishness. Yes, Guillaume has joined the rest of the world in finding something sensual about Isabelle Huppert, hardly a cause for either lamentation or praise. But within the context of the film, it suggests yet another complication that bobs its head upon the surface on account of the only person who sees Mika touch Guillaume at the exhibition, a beautiful eighteen-year-old by the name of Jeanne Pollet (Anna Mouglalis).

Jeanne we know from an earlier scene. In it, two very well-to-do middle-aged ladies Pauline (German actress Isolde Barth) and Louise Pollet meet in a posh restaurant where, one gets the impression, they no longer need to look at the menu. Apart from reveling in their poshness, they are also awaiting their teenage children, Jeanne and Axel, who are openly dating but “probably playing tennis right now” (the hint is clear, even to the mothers in denial). When the duo finally cruises in still perspiring from, well, their afternoon workout, Pauline is reminded of an announcement from today’s paper regarding the Muller-Polonski wedding. What happens next is so preposterous (Barth's pronounced accent in French imbues the whole scene with an urgent gravity, as if the foreign press were reporting a scandal) it could only be likely: apparently Jeanne, a budding young pianist, was born at the same hospital on the same day as Guillaume Polonski. Owing to a dearth in bracelets, only the first three letters of their surnames were written and – and here I admit to having laughed myself silly, and not only at the thought of a Swiss hospital lacking supplies. In any case, what we may say is that some doubts arise as to Jeanne's parentage, all the more so since her legal father has been dead for many years; Louise's shockingly defensive reaction – any self-assured parent would have mocked the whole notion – only serves to deepen Jeanne's and our suspicions. One thing leads to another and Jeanne shows up on the Polonskis' doorstep eager to meet the great master. In no small coincidence, she also happens to have a piano competition in Budapest in a couple of weeks and could benefit from as much private tutoring as possible. Polonski, of course, is in that regard all too happy to oblige. And although he makes a point of verbally dismissing Jeanne's paternity queries, his treatment of her indicates otherwise, perhaps because she reminds him of Lisbeth, whose gestures culled from photographs in Guillaume's room she begins to ape.

Not every secret that subtends Merci pour le chocolat is revealed, because life does not show all its cards, at least not all at once. We may think we know what took place that lonely night, but the versions we get cannot be considered in any way definitive. There are many delicate, observant moments that illuminate our cast in unpredictable ways: consider when Dutronc, a marvelously understated actor, thoroughly convinces Jeanne that he may believe her story, then turns to Guillaume and speaks exactly like a father who has no doubt about his offspring; when Mika goes to see Louise in her office for one of the tensest tea-drinking scenes in recent memory; or when a character turns off the lights in bed only to have a close-up reveal a face much more awake in the darkness than the light, as if the face and the brain behind it thrived in the shadows of human motives. A couple of details from the telltale flashback, details specifically concerning Guillaume, also imply what may have happened and what may yet occur. Yet as Polonski himself admits, Jeanne's distinct resemblance to Lisbeth has as much to do with the good memory it generates as with any biological probability. Almost anyone can resemble anyone else if a few key mannerisms are copied; the more eccentric the mannerisms available, the more convincing the understudy. And we haven't even mentioned what piece Jeanne will be playing in Budapest.