Several fans of film and love would agree that there’s no better teacher in the art of love than French Cinema. Dreamlike sequences, magical characters, illusive storytelling, fantastical landscapes, and Utopian affairs come together on the silver screen to display the splendor of our dreams. Reality is deconstructed amidst tales that cross the containment of space and time, in order to create a unique journey.
As the frames of a French film come alive before our eyes, we brace ourselves with the poetic script born out of a romantic anecdote, made out of childlike memories, strange colors, musical relics, and a narrative that is hard to pinpoint to a particular time. Despite the ambiguous setting, these movies become incredible representations of a daydream anyone sick with love has had.
Michael Gondry has broken again and again all preconceptions of love and its different shapes. His interpretation of the novels he has adapted to the screen create spectacular scenarios that turn an ordinary date into an underwater encounter, a picnic featuring both the sun and the moon, or a honeymoon walk among the clouds.
Moon Indigo (2013) Michel Gondry
Amelie (2000) – Jean-Pierre Jeunet
In 1919 André Breton spearheaded the artistic and literary movement that set the stage for surrealist filmmaking. It would not be until the twenties that several Parisian avant-garde experiments turned into the first French short films. Films like The Return to Reason (1923), Emak-Bakia (1926), The Starfish (1928), The Mysteries du Château de Dé (1929), Entr’acte (1924), Mechanical Ballet (1924), or The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923) were the first to actually present a surreal aesthetic. This would eventually lead to visual metaphors, fused dimensions that create a cinematic succession, or a combination of several seemingly unrelated scenes.
He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (2002) – Lætitia Colombani
Happenstance (2000) – Laurent Firode
These French surrealist movies broke conventional narrative structure by using seemingly unrelated sequences. The directors used cinematic language created from a moral and aesthetic principle, fantasy, cruel humor, lyrical eroticism, and hazy settings to bring forth delirious realms. These constitute the same elements that French cinema refuses to explain, given that surrealism does not see the need to clarify symbolism and action.
The Science of Sleep (2006) – Michel Gondry
The Obscure Object of Desire (1977) – Luis Buñuel
Another element worth noting within this genre is the exaltation of a love that breaks every barrier that comes its way. Romantic satire serves as a rebellion or contradiction to bring the viewer closer to the idealization of eternal love. Through these stories and characters, the spectator forgets the hallucinations and starts believing in the perfection of perpetual lovers. They slip through the ephemeral present to graze the freedom of pleasure and discover the satisfaction of every desire.
Love Me If You Dare (2003) – Yann Samuell
Cutting-edge film that fused dreams, art, and reality was inspired by other forms of art and history. The characteristics of Surreal French Film safeguard pieces of bygone knowledge, as well as aesthetic elements of Cubism, Dada, and obviously Surrealism in each scene. French film has always incited curiosity in the viewer, whether due to its magical universe or its fantastical endings, where love becomes the strength or unbeatable impulse for two characters who are destined to be with each other.
Translated by María Suárez
