Live for Life

THE title tells it all. Live for Life has the air of a home movie all about The Fun Times We Had--watching a boxing match, chasing wild animals in Africa, skiing in the Alps--with something of a story thrown in for free.

The story comes in spurts, with snatches of documentaries thrown in at random. Robert (Yves Montand), the hero, spends most of his time wandering around the world making television documentaries. Admittedly, Robert is not a bad television documentary producer, but the horrors of Vietnam are not relevant to the love story that should be the core of the film. One can only assume that these sequences are thrown in as Contrast, but the contrast is too great to have any meaning to the audience. Half the time you are watching a French Flick, and the other half you are watching an Evils of War documentary.

The French Flick is enjoyable. Robert, leading an exciting life as he does, has ample opportunity to fall in love with Other Women, as he does. His wife Catherine (Annie Girardoux) knows more than he thinks, but she loves him anyway. Robert finally Falls Hard for an American swinger called Candice (who is played by an actress called Candice Bergen). Sick of deceit, he tells Catherine everything and goes off to live with Candice. Meanwhile Catherine sets out on a new life of her own. But of course, in the style of A Man and a Woman, he realizes that he has Fallen Hard already--ten years ago, in fact--and returns to Candice. Candice goes back to New York, self-sufficient, as predatory as always, and all ends happily.

BUT Claude Lelouch, the director, somehow lost the simplicity and straightforwardness that made such a wonderful film of his A Man and a Woman. The directing is still there: the freshness and unpretentiousness of home-movies comes through in the acting, as, unfortunately, it does in the editing. A Man and a Woman flowed; each episode followed the one before it smoothly. In Live for Life, the documentary sequences chop up the story, and though Lelouch has tried to fashion a rope, all we get is a few strands loosely wound together. The story itself stops and starts like a temperamental machine; incidents last too long, making their point several times over, while others are cut short. But where it goes, the film is sometimes eloquent, sometimes hilarious, sometimes magnificent.

Annie Girardoux is eloquent as Catherine, the almost-middle-aged woman who is old enough to understand Robert, and yet so much younger than Candice, the shallow, suave worldling. Catherine reminds one of Julie Christie in Billy Liar--a woman so loving that she will sacrifice her love to her man's happiness...or his whim.

Robert is certainly a man driven by whim, the archetypal French man-of-the-world, and most of his character is lack of character. In the end, he discovers the character he has been hiding, and can no longer live with his counterpart Candice. She is the perfect Frenchman's American, and utters such lines as: "I always sleep well...when I'm in your arms," with consummate American soppiness. Yet Robert's infatuation is not unbelievable, for Candice's smiles are home-movie--and natural.

The hilarious parts are also home-movie: the maid chewing an apple as she answers the phone makes you laugh from inside. And there is the enterprising bellboy who turns up as a waiter in a restaurant and finally as the owner of the ski lodge where Robert catches up with Catherine.

The characters are magnificent, the jokes are delightful, and the film is worth seeing if you don't mind a light case of schizophrenia.