New Movies: Truce Is Beauty

“Sir, I would like to ask for your daughter’s hand.”

“Why not? You’ve already had the rest.”

Hardly a promising start for a marriage—or a comedy. But French Director Claude Berri has a singular talent for reconciling opposites. His last film, The Two of Us (TIME, March 8, 1968), was built on the somehow delightful confrontation between an anti-Semitic old man and a Jewish nine-year-old. In Marry Me, Marry Me, Berri finds legitimate laughter in the plight of a pregnant bride-to-be, her philandering fiance, and parvenu in-laws who behave like outlaws.

Claude (Claude Berri) is the little Jewish boy of The Two of Us grown to physical if not emotional maturity. His inamorata Isabelle (Elisabeth Wiener) is with child, but Claude is no hit-and-run villain. Wistful, tentative, he may be unsure of the proper words to say, but he knows enough to do the right thing.

On his way to the altar Claude succumbs to a touch of Portnoy’s complaint. He develops a ravenous appetite for his beautiful English teacher (Prudence Harrington) and abruptly decides that he has found true love. Barricades are formed by the relatives; insults and wounds are exchanged. But finally Claude and Isabelle discover that truce is beauty and end the war at a ritualistic nuptial feast.

Though he conceived, wrote, directed and stars in Marry Me, Marry Me, Berri knows better than to make his film a one-man show. The best performances, in fact, are given not by the youths but by their satiated elders who long ago seized life by the throat—only to find that they had killed it. The best of a talented troupe is Isabelle’s much older sister, Marthe (Regine), a doughy redhead who believes that sex appeal, like flour, is measured by the pound. As Isabelle’s hag-ridden father, Gregoire Asian can convey more with a lowered eyelid than most men do with a shrug of their shoulders.

The trials of courtship have always been natural subjects for film makers. Berri watches them without mockery or disdain. The result is a rare observation of the pathos and humor engendered by the rites of man.