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Éliane Weiss (Emmanuelle Devos) is just the kind of person you’d expect to see
window shopping on a fashionable street in Paris. She’s a stylish woman in her early‘40s, certainly attractive if not quite “a beauty.” Although devoted to her family, Éliane
is a warm and affectionate elementary school teacher by day, and she also enjoys
nights out with her gal pals. This is the woman she shows to the public; this is the Éliane everyone has known for years.
But there is another Éliane who is considerably more introverted, someone who is
equally at home in a very different time and place. This private Éliane strolls
comfortably around the streets of an old Polish shtetl somewhere on the outskirts of
Warsaw. When the film opens, Éliane has just lost her father Jusek (Michel Feldman),
and her mother Rénia (Solange Najman) is growing increasingly infirm and dependent.
Soon they will both be gone, leaving nothing behind but their stories. And so Éliane
starts writing them down, filling notebook after notebook with scenes and sketches,
repopulating a world lost to the Holocaust.
Writer/director Idit Cebula has a light touch, but there’s a serious side to this semiautobiographical
story in which Cebula casts herself as Éliane’s fairy godmother.
(Cebula plays an author who connects Éliane with her own publisher after they meet at
a reading.) If you don’t pay attention to what Éliane is actually writing about, then you
won’t really understand the dynamics of her interior drama.
Éliane’s sudden absorption in this inner world creates chaos for everyone around her.
Her husband “Sylvain” (Gérard Darmon) is a conventional guy who is totally
comfortable in their marriage status quo ante, and their teenage daughter “Bella” (Maia
Riviere) naturally thinks it’s her turn to be the one having all the adventures. Similarly
her colleagues at the school are all discombobulated when the always reliable Éliane
becomes distracted and preoccupied. One day she suddenly buys herself a laptop
computer, and tongues start wagging, but even though they all know she’s writing “something,” no one really believes that the writing itself can be the cause of all these
changes. Perhaps it’s her publisher “David Klein” (Jocelyn Quivrin) – an attractive
young man who is also, gasp, German!
Devos is a superb physical comedienne, and Darmon has a clownishly long face which
becomes increasingly sad-sack as his prominent eyes grow ever more puffy. Sylvain
wants to prove that he’s open-minded and supportive, so he asks Éliane to invite Klein
to dinner. Suffice it to say, hilarious consequences ensue. But it’s not just alcohol that
makes her sick. Éliane is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and resurrecting their
childhood world is at best bittersweet. The depiction of her inner conflict is all that we
will ever know about the depth of their sorrow.
Cebula makes ingenious use of her large, boisterous cast. She wants us to laugh, and
she makes laughing easy for us. So she will probably forgive you if you think Two
Lives Plus One is just a routine women’s liberation comedy (as if there were already so
many to chose from that we simply didn’t need any more). She might forgive you, but I
won’t.
© Jan Lisa Huttner (8/27/08) for the Fund for Women Artists (www.WomenArts.org)
Question: What Does the Title Mean?
Here is Idit Cebula’s explanation from the official press kit:
“The title itself is a perfect reflection of the various ways one can interpret the film. One
can read it horizontally and vertically. Two Lives Plus One could refer to Éliane’s
personal and professional life, plus the one that she dreams of. It could also refer to
the lives of a man, his wife, and that of the third character, David Klein, who threatens
to come between them. The title can mean different things to different people; it
depends on the viewer’s interpretation.”
Here’s my interpretation:
The first “two lives” belong to Jusek and Rénia who gave birth to our heroine Éliane. But
then Éliane and Sylvan gave birth to Bella, and one day her life might join with another,
and the new life of Éliane’s grandchild will begin. The core of Judaism is the story of
generations. Adolph Hitler tried to end that story, but even as we all acknowledge the grievous damage he caused, we also know Hitler totally failed to accomplish his goal.
Credit for photo of Emmanuelle Devos: © Rezo Films International (France) & Seventh Art Releasing (USA).
All Rights Reserved.
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