Synopsis
Walerian Borowczyk, a filmmaker, unleased a French drama in the year 1976 titled La Marge. This film is based on the novel La Marge and revolves around the themes of emotional void, existential yearning, and emotional loss. This film is similar to other works created by Walerian Borowczyk in that it focuses more on mood and atmosphere instead of plot. In this film, Walerian Borowczyk attempts to demonstrate a man’s inability to come to terms with himself and his life.
The plot of the film opens with Sigismond Pons, who seems to have it all. He is a successful businessman with a wife and a child, and the family is living in the countryside. He enjoys a peaceful life which is quite settled and is full of a domestic routine. He goes on a business trip to Paris, and after completing the trip, he is expecting to come back to his life full of comfort. However, much to his surprise, he learns that on one of the days while he is in the city, his wife dies in an unfortunate accident.
This shocking discovery completely destabilizes the emotional balance of the character. From the moment on, La Marge is less about the external action and more about the internal disintegration. Sigismond is consumed by sorrow and bewildered by the absence of the pillar of his existence. He decides against going home straight away and instead, sets out to wander the streets of Paris, detached from his feelings and looking for comforting faces and places.
In the course of this rambling, Sigismond encounters Diana, a young woman on the edges of the social spectrum. Diana is a complex character, somewhat nurturing, yet also remote. There is a strong, silent bond of companionship and the two are drawn together by shared loneliness. What was and is a passing, more of a side, relationship for Diana, with time, grows and brings Sigismond periods of respite during his disintegration.
The relationship and the bond that Sigismond and Diana share is one of promptness and a certain emotional delicateness. While one would expect the story to be a love story, or a case of melodrama, La Marge ignores the feelings and emotion, focussing instead on the gaps in feelings, the pauses, the actions, the looks. In these fragments, Borowczyk captures sorrow, the process of healing and the fragility of our humanity.
The essence of the artistic intent remains clear: rather than trying to ease Sigismond’s grief, the film reflects on the circular nature of grief, the loneliness of emotional connections, loss, and the arduous journey of healing. In the end, the viewers have more questions than answers, and the film continues to be poetic and contemplative. As the audience can see, the film does not resolve any answers.
Cast & Crew
The character Sigismond is played by Joe Dallesandro who, retains the character’s emotional confusion due to his mother’s loss all the while maintaining poise. Dallesandro is best known for his role in American underground films, particularly for his work alongside Andy Warhol. In his performance, Dallesandro captures the stillness at the heart of grief without exaggerated dramatization gestures. His mastery of subdued expression where no language is used conduces to the depth of the film. Dallesandro’s performance is at the heart of the film’s greatest merit.
The role of Sigismond’s imaginary companion, who assists him in the navigation of his complex grief, is played by Sylvia Kristel. A renowned film actress of the 70s in Europe, Kristel’s iteration of Diana is equally astounding. With sustaining poignancy she captures the right blend of distance and protection that permits Sigismond to encounter the essence of his own solitude.
When it comes to the directing of the movie, it was done by Walerian Borowczyk a Polish avant-garde filmmaker who was known for his rigorous approach to art. In Marge, Borowczyk concentrates on the psychological depths of a scene. He looks for the angles and positions of the characters, and mentally stretches the time as he builds a poetic film. Exposition pales in the presence of rich writing, and the film instead, creates a bounding poetic imaginary. It becomes a bead film that is thick in feeling, encompassing peace, rich in silence, and stretches time with ease. It offers endless streams and lakes of breath and semblance.
The Quiet, yet solitary sensibilities of civilization is a sight, and sensibility that is imbibed and absorbed within the film’s use of music. Within, the introspection serves to quiet the cadence of breath, and within the silence and solitude, stitch each forgotten limb; each thread of emotion. The silence thick with unsent feelings serves to sooth the character film, and quilt the unresolved around the quiet longing within.
The film aims to capture both and the quiet solitude of a character as they explore their emotion, along with and the gentle, dreamy, wispy solitude of the city. The city is unabashedly, untouched. Untainted by, love, longing and abandonment, and incredibly, peace. The city becomes the pallette. Bathed within the light, and drenched in the flickering ghostly pulse, she slowly awakens to the essence buried.
The acting characters of the film and the city, become one.
Borowczyk, in his mastery of juxtaposition is powerful in his use of multiple mediums. He fervently supports the clarity of emotion in each character of the film with the overlapping textures that compliment, quilt and layer each other. The film becomes serene, prayer like. Stunned by the spell of the characters buried deep in unison, and alone.
La Marge scores between a modest 5.6 and 6.0 out of 10 on IMDb. As with many European films, and particularly European art films, Azulejos lacks traditional forms of narrative and dramatic structure, and deep and rarefied moods, lusciously enveloping vistas, and the personal imprints of the director and protagonists.
B. Gordon Lewis said that Azulejos is a “warm cocoon of translucent silk.” Many of Borowczyk’s works present life stripped to what is meaningful. It is in his works that La Marge emotional state resonates within viewers that describe La Marge unenthusiastically.
Feedback on Joe Dallesandro’s emotional performance, particularly the more sincere aspects of it, was that his character is one of his most fully realized and mature to date. The aappearance of Sylvia Kristel was also noted to be most favorably with comments about the graceful simplicity and modestly quality she carried with her.
La marge has attracted a growing reception, especially from 1970s European cinema aficionados. Even though it is not a major topic within mainstream cinema, la marge is still a focal point for academics studying the relations between loss, artistic creation, and memory.
The Conclusion
La marge is not a standard drama, and it is also rather difficult to pigeonhole. It occupies a liminal zone between poetic and realistic, and it touches on the emotional consequences of public tragedy through economy of words, shadowy images, and echoes of dominant performances. It is in the subtleties that the strength of the movie rests. There are hinges to the silences, and one is invited to witness the delicate dramas unfolding in the stillness of the characters.
La marge poignantly captures the bleakness of solitude, and the tenuous bonds that sometimes pull a man from the depths of his despair. It speaks of a journey on dual fronts, and the ephemeral joy of encountering a soul that comprehends one’s silence.
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