A Sunday in the Country

Making a good film about a subject one loves is extremely difficult. When Bertrand Tavernier, who died on March 25 at the age of 79, made the film ‘Round Midnight in 1986, his love of jazz music was preponderantly clear – so clear, in fact, that it was a pity he didn’t love jazz a lot less than he did: it would have probably resulted in a better film. 

Looking back on Tavernier’ films, two of which I reviewed on this blog, there is always one that draws me back to it, even if I know it isn’t as good as it could’ve been. I first saw A Sunday in the Country in Denver in the mid-‘80s when it opened at one of the city’s art houses – either The Vogue or The Esquire. I saw it at a matinee, with the theater almost empty. What struck me most about it was its exquisite sensuality – like an overripe fruit. The buzzing of flies seemed to permeate it. 

Twenty years later I got the Kino Lorber DVD of the film, only because it featured Tavernier’s commentary in English. Initially he spoke about how he and his cinematographer, Bruno de Keyser, had experimented in the lab and discovered that leaving the silver on the film by skipping the bleaching bath resulted in the whitest of whites and the blackest of blacks. The colors were altered as well, with reds turning purple and dark reds, like the wine in a decanter, turning black. 

Tavernier complained that so many critics mentioned that the film evokes impressionist painting. He denied this and countered that he was consciously imitating the early color photographs of the Brothers Lumière. But there is a scene near the end of the film set on a dance floor near a river that is immediately reminiscent not just of Renoir, but of Jacques Becker’s Casque d’Or. 

Tavernier confesses in his commentary a number of things, but what comes across most powerfully is his reverence for Pierre Bost, one half of the legendary French script-writing team that included Jean Aurenche. Tavernier and his wife, Colo, adapted A Sunday in the Country from a novel by Bost. When Bost died in 1975 Tavernier had difficulties acquiring the rights to adapt the novel from Bost’s son, whose approval, once the film was finished, was crucial to Tavernier. Tavernier supplied the film with a narrator and did it himself, which is yet another personal stamp on the film. The music throughout the film is Faure’s late 2nd Piano Quintet. It’s understated loveliness perfectly underscores the action in the film. One reason for this was that Tavernier actually played the music while his long takes were being shot to help the actors and his camera operator fall into the rhythm of the piece. 

But Tavernier spent a great deal of the Kino DVD commentary talking about the actor, Louis Ducreux, whom he had chosen to play the lead character, the old painter Monsieur Ladmiral. Ducreux was in his seventies and had done it all – writing plays, acting on the stage, writing songs (the words to the song Max Ophuls used in La Ronde were written by him). He had also been a painter, and Tavernier even shows us one of his canvasses in A Sunday in the Country when Irène finds it in a trunk. 

Problems arose, however, when Ducreux’s inexperience of film acting caused him to forget his lines, lose his place and miss his cues. Tavernier’s design of the film called for very long takes with a moving camera. Ducreux sometimes became disoriented about the focus of his performance and he didn’t seem to understand film directing. So Tavernier sometimes asked the other actors in the scene, Sabine Azéma and Michel Aumont, to physically place him where he was supposed to be in the shot. This is a little funny in the beautiful dance scene near the end of the film in which Sabine Azema is leading Louis Ducreux in the dance. 

The film was shot entirely on location and, despite constant problems with the weather, exudes a luxurious autumnal glow. Interior scenes, for example, are striped with sunlight shining through windows and shutters. Three of the actors are marvelous: Monique Chaumette, who is Philippe Noiret’s wife, is such a strong presence as Mercedes, Ladmiral housekeeper; Michel Aumont, Ladmiral’s son, who, even in middle age, cannot stop trying – and failing – to earn his father’s praise; and Sabine Azema, as Irène, Ladmiral’s beautiful, passionate (and unhappy) daughter. When she arrives at the house, she upsets everything and excites everyone with her perpetual motion. She is her father’s favorite child, as his son knows too well. 

But A Sunday in the Country is weak at its center – Tavernier’s choice of Louis Ducreux to play Monsieur Ladmiral. The choice of Ducreux is almost as bad as that of Dexter Gordon in ‘Round Midnight. Gordon, himself an old veteran of the jazz circuit, was an exceptionally dignified presence on screen (the role was modelled on piano player Bud Powell). But when it came to acting or delivering his lines, Gordon was as sadly insubstantial as his sandpapered voice. Louis Ducreux presented the opposite problem: while he was capable of acting, he has the presence of a shadow. He is as insubstantial on the screen as the two little girls Monsieur Ladmiral sees playing at various moments throughout the film. And it isn’t because of his advanced age. Many actors grow old and continue to give commanding performances. Louis Ducreux seems frail and drawn in all of his scenes, which perhaps illustrates the title of Bost’s novel, Monsieur Ladmiral will soon die. (1) There is even a flash-forward showing us the old man on his death-bed with his family gathered around it. A producer balked at a film title with the word “die” in it, and Ducreux himself suggested the title that Tavernier used. 

Despite this (or is it because?), A Sunday in the Country occupies a special place in my cinephilic heart. Au revoir to dear Bertrand Tavernier. 

(1) Pierre Bost, Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1945