l'Ennui (1998) - Cedric Kahn

Tiré d'un roman d'Alberto Moravia, Martin, professeur de philosophie a l'université, en pleine

dépression, rencontre dans des circonstances étranges Cecilia, à l'origine de la mort d'un vieux

peintre. Il va vivre avec cette jeune fille, qui oscille entre pureté et indifférence, une passion

charnelle et orageuse et malgré lui (?) prendre la place du vieux peintre. Son ancienne compagne devient une

confidente un peu cruelle et la spectatrice privilégiée de cette passion qui détruit une a une ses

certitudes.



Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, the plot is basically about a philosophy professor,an unsympathethic womaniser who

has the desire to do something with his life. He meets a young woman, who was a model for a painter, who died while they

were having sex, he doesn't get along well with her yet he has this physical connection to her. His obsession with her

and her inability to respond to him make him resort to violence, he wants to break up with her and yet he cannot.


I think you miss the whole point of this movie if you are expecting a typical Hollywood "brainwashing" movie.

This movie is French. The whole point of the movie is precisely that the woman is not slim and gorgeous like a model (as

Hollywood would make you want to believe all woman should be to be desirable to men). The fact that she is chubby makes

the point precisely. She is not beautiful in his eyes, she is plain and chubby but he is crazy about her, why? because

he cannot posses her. (Apart from physical pleasure there is nothing he can give her to make her interested in him.) And

the farther away she is emotionally the more he wants her, and the more obsessed he gets with her. It has nothing to do

with the outer physical beauty --she has managed to possess him in every way, without the "beauty" attributes

that Hollywood movies would want to instill in the audiences. Her character has weaknesses as to the emotional and that

is what drives him crazy about her. This movie is a great awakening into the deeper psyche of men