Customer Reviews

Love Unto Death (L'Amour A Mort) (1984)

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more than a mood piece - this is a thought provoking film - presenting glimpses in the aftermath of a man's sudden death - and spontaneous revival - how it affects on his relationship with his newly acquired girlfriend - and with his close friends who happen to be man and wife clerics - and with himself

the film makes no attempts at an ultimate answer - altho the man is a freethinker - the framework of the film is a judeo-christian one

director Alain Resnais uses snowflakes and exotic music as scene transitions - the visuals are generally striking - the acting very good - with Pierre Arditi as the man - cutie pie Sabine Azéma as his new girlfriend - with André Dussollier and Fanny Ardant as the clerics

I found it hard to warm to this film. I like Resnais but this treatment of life overshadowed by death:when is a dead man not dead?When he's mysteriously ressurrected.Even then he's like the walking dead to his lover who's only known him briefly.This is about love unto death and beyond.What did he learn in the afterlife before his strange ressurrection? He liked what he saw,may have even wanted to stay.In his 'new' life with his partner he's like McCavity the mystery cat, when he's not doing archaeology,liable to pop off or disappear.They prepare for his re-death by wanting to do all the things they would have like to do if they'd have lived a normal life.Their cleric friends(another couple) cannot convert them to a more Christian view of life and death. Arditi dies again after getting to make mad passionate love a few times to Azema.However Azema promises to join him in the afterlife, feeling against her friends' wishes,this is the best she'll ever know of love.They are forced to question whether their religious books have lost some types of love in translation rendering their advice futile.Small scenes are divided up by even smaller interludes of music by Hanze Werner Heinze and scenes of either falling snow or dust motes.I found this device irritating after a while.Azema goes off to join her dead lover as she walks off into the dark.I found it dour and gloomy beyond belief or a massive intellectual leg-pull.Riffing with Descartes.