“Chronicle of a fleeting love”, about sentimental relationships and their stumbling

Simon is a well-married therapist with children; Charlotte, an open-minded single mother, looking for a no-strings-attached relationship, at first (or at first…) just a crib. A chance meeting and he gets down to business, and everything is so fast that it is commented on. She does not mince words; sinks into an ocean of doubts, marital, existential and other… You know after a few minutes that you are in a real French-style dramatic comedy, except that Paris is well present in its exteriors.

As soon as you turn to your cinephile memory, you feel Rohmer’s tone with a heavy dose of Woody Allen. Sometimes you feel like you are in New York as you imagine Allen with his soliloquies in gestures and words, even though he has a woman by his side with whom he says he is deeply in love. As the plot progresses, she seems to thrive, while he can, and continues to be, devastated by his adultery. And let’s not avoid it any further spoilersbecause the chemistry between the two protagonists makes us watch the course of this sentimental adventure with interest.

Emmanuel Mouret, co-author of the script, in his filmography (with several unreleased titles in Spain) is very fond of the juicy theme of relationships, with its edges, and does not hide his influences in the above line, resorting to a style in an informal performance, although careful, with the prevalence of sequences without cuts, painstaking in dialogues, not at all pedantic and burdensome, which cannot be said for some of his compatriots.

It is true that from time to time improbability appears and some situations are a bit forced, but the freshness immediately returns, leaving the viewer in the air to guess the outcome, really intuited minutes before (if you are good). The intrusion of a third character will inevitably introduce emotional friction, but the final sequence will conclude the plot to conclude that love, in addition to being fleeting, is anything but simple… and that avoiding its stumbling will be the key to success. A smile occupies the mouth as the climax.

«CHRONIQUE D’UNE LIAISON PASSAGÈRE»

France, 2022.

Director: Emmanuel Mouret.

Cast: Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Macaigne, Georgia Scalliet, Maxence Tual, Stéphane Mercoyrol, Eric Wrembel.

Comedy.

100 minutes.