Sundays and Cybele

1962 drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A 30-year-old war veteran befriends a young girl who was dropped off at a boarding school by a father who never intends to return.

Trees all over this movie, and I'm not sure exactly what the significance is.

This is a gorgeous movie, and depending on your perspective, a beautiful relationship. It's impossible not to watch this and think of pedophilia, wonder about Pierre's intentions with this 12-year-old child, give the whole thing the same side-eye that a lot of the characters putzing around the lake give these characters. It is difficult to pinpoint just what Pierre's intentions are as he pretends to be this girl's father and takes her on these idyllic Sunday playtime dates. Knowing that he's tortured by the war experience shown in the strange cold open, one that uses some stock footage and wild editing that sharply contrasts with the rest of the film, you know there's some psychological damage that has made him regress to an almost childlike state. So at times, he and Cybele are equals, nothing more than buddies. At other times, he's a father figure or ironically somebody who seems like her child or her patient or even her jealous lover.

Any ambiguity created here is partially the result of the two performances. Pierre's played by a guy with a great name--Hardy Kruger--and he plays the character with this perpetual stupor. There's something very close to genuine love on his face in the scenes when he's with Cybele, and at least for me, he was never threatening at all. That might be because of the terrific performance of Patricia Gozzi though. She was really 12 when this was made, and there's this surprising depth and balance to the performance where she's simultaneously as immature as a 12-year-old should be while having this mysterious wisdom. There's an innocent manipulation that goes both ways here.

The rest of the ambiguity comes from Serge Bourguignon painting such beautiful cinematic poetry. This is a visual feast, and it all comes so effortlessly. A shot in a rearview mirror, an elevator, a window with tree reflections superimposed over the characters, a steeple cock shot, playing around with lights, all those water ripples, a foggy daydream that isn't a dream at all, dinner party guests seen through an empty glass, horses watched from a spot in a fogged-up window, a merry-go-round chicken, a fishbowl-headed clairvoyant, a crystal ball zoom. At times, it's impossibly dreamy, making the whole thing a tragic fairy tale.

Bourguignon didn't make much else, but the Criterion release of this had a documentary short about monks that I also watched and enjoyed. It was called Le Sourire (The Smile). It's got a lot of beautiful shots, too, so many that it's hard to see this as a documentary. It's very directed, if you know what I mean. It is a touching little slice-of-life story and look at Buddhism though. There's one particularly mind-blowing shot of a leaf and a tree that I enjoyed. And all the smiles, of course.