C'est La Vie Reviews

Set in 1958, C'EST LA VIE is the third installment, following the immensely popular PEPPERMINT SODA and ENTRE NOUS, of Diane Kurys' absorbing semi-autobiographical trilogy. Having decided to divorce her husband Michel (Richard Berry), the beautiful Lena (Nathalie Baye) puts her two daughters on a train in Lyon bound for La Baule Les Pins for a seaside vacation. The summer proves an eventful one, with the girls learning all manner of lessons in living. Lena eventually joins her daughters and engages in what she thinks is a secret affair with a young artist, Leon (Jean-Pierre Bacri), though the children observe her dashing off into the night to meet him. The tranquility of their idyll is shattered by the unexpected arrival of their father. No one can accuse Kurys of any real depth here; her strength as a director lies primarily in her sense of detail and in her ability to convey a nostalgic atmosphere. In its indolent sensuality and wealth of everyday observation, Kurys's work resembles some of the lighter, summery short stories of Colette. C'EST LA VIE is the merest trifle, but, given its sun-soaked ambience, the film is utterly painless and enjoyable. Never more glamorous, Baye communicates a slightly neurotic, Jennifer Jones-like quality and makes an appealingly complex heroine. The scene where she first sees her lover on the beach and snakes her way through the cabanas to meet him is dizzyingly romantic. Bacri is properly sexy as Lena's lover, and Berry exudes the right amount of pained anguish as her husband. Like Truffaut, Kurys has a precious, idealized view of children. They're all angelic, brilliant little paragons. The girls have a woman-in-a-child's-body beauty that is as much of a Gallic cliche as their huskily precocious voices are; the boys are budding artistic geniuses. Still, all of this sweetness and light leaves the viewer yearning for the youthful raunch and anarchy of a film like LIFE IS A LONG QUIET RIVER.