Marie-Jo et ses 2 amours (2002)
Directed by Robert Guédiguian

Film Review

This film marks a slight departure for director Robert Guédiguian, from the social realist drama into the realms of conventional romantic melodrama.  The move is a slight one, because Guédiguian retains the naturalistic style that bathes all of his films and contributes so much to their rich humanity and poetry, but it is significant.  As the drama unfolds, at the director's customary unhurried pace, the story and characters assume an increasingly artificial dimension, culminating in an ending which would work well in an early 19th century novel but which appears false and anything but poetic in this 21st century film d'auteur.

Although the film is not Guédiguian's best (it lacks both lyrical charm and sincerity of his sublime 1997 work, Marius et Jeannette), it has great artistic strength in the form of Renato Berta's beautiful and melancholic photography, and first class performances from the three lead actors.  As ever, Ariane Ascaride brings depth and poignancy to a thinly drawn character, her introspective portrayal harrowingly conveying a soul that is tormented by an impossible, and ultimately destructive, passion.

Film Synopsis

Marie-Jo is a woman who, in early middle age, appears to have all she could want to lead a comfortable and fulfilled life.  She derives satisfaction from her work as an ambulance driver in Marseille, she is happily married to Daniel, who runs his own successful construction company, and she has a well-adjusted teenage daughter Julie.  Life could hardly be better.  But Marie-Jo has a secret that is tormenting her.  For the past year she has been carrying on a secret love affair with another man, an attractive boatman named Marco.  So intense are her feelings for her lover that Marie-Jo has often contemplated leaving Daniel, but she cannot bring herself to do so.  She knows that the double life she has been leading is becoming unbearable, but she fears how her husband will react to the news that she has been seeing another man.  The dilemma is resolved one day when, whilst working on a roof, Daniel happens to see his wife lying half-naked on Marco's patio...