Le Parfum D'Yvonne
Patrice Leconte, France, 1994, 89 mins
Review by Gerald Houghton (1994)
A young deserter from the Algerian war (Hippolyte Girardot), stares ruefully into a fire and tells his story. Under the name Victor Chmara and a determination to "above all do nothing" this aspiring writer arrives at a well-to-do lakeside resort near the Swiss border. In a hotel foyer he meets the beautiful Yvonne (Sandra Majani), and is in turn introduced to the ageing, flamboyantly gay Dr Rene Meinthe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and his big American car. Time passes and love blossoms between Victor and would-be actress Yvonne, under the watchful eye of Meinthe, before an inevitable darkness intrudes upon the trio's unreal, sun-soaked existence of social gatherings, motor jaunts, and afternoon assignations in hotel rooms.
Leconte's last film, the slightly ill-advised Tango (a broad and over-long comedy on the failings of machismo) disappointed after the delicate, melancholic eroticism of his Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser's Husband. This new film - adapted from the novel Villa Triste by Patrick Modiano - is a return to the eccentric (if hardly sexually enlightened) pleasures of those earlier pictures, even if its certificate is caution enough that this is altogether more vigorous in its passions.
Not that Le Parfum D'Yvonne is - save for one misjudged interlude aboard a boat - some clumsy, fumbling soft porn; the film is more explicit than before, but no more (and often a lot less) than many of its contemporaries. Like The Hairdresser's Husband in particular, not a great deal actually happens in here. There are events - like the winning of the absurd Houligant Cup for Automotive Elegance - but plot is largely exchanged for a more diaphanous (and successful) evocation of period ('50s) and place. Eduardo Serra beautifully shoots the whole in luminous 'Scope, and as ever with this director the whole slight confection is promptly brought in (a concise 89 minutes). No longer does Michael Nyman provide for Leconte, but Pascal Esteve's plaintive, impressive soundtrack owes more than a little to the British scorer.
As with this director's other film though, there is a thin line between melancholy and bathos, and it takes some clever footwork to avoid falling headlong into the latter with material as admittedly slender as this. Crucially, Leconte has tinkered with the ages of his main characters from the Modiano, changing Meinthe from a young man to an ageing queen, and Victor from an eighteen-year-old to the more mature Girardot (best known here for Eric Rochant's cult 1989 movie A World Without Pity), which in the latter case in particular adds weight to what might otherwise be an even slimmer, adolescent anecdote than it already is. Majani keeps Yvonne herself on just the right side of the line between sensual and rather pathetic; Victor's infatuation is both heady and, the director/writer reminds us, actually a little sad.
The problem for Leconte is that having made a film that found favour with almost everyone - The Hairdresser's Husband - whatever he does after is inevitably to judged against it, and while the perfume of this particular example may be slight, it's undeniably intoxicating.