The third and final part of Diane Kurys’ autobiographical trilogy, “Coup de foudre” does not draw its inspiration from the story of her own youth as in the first two films (“Diabolo menthe” and “Cocktail Molotov”) but from that of her parents, even if she appears briefly as a little girl, Sophie. “Coup de foudre” is the fictionalized story of Diane Kurys’ mother and her best friend who meet in the 1950s and develop an emancipating friendship in love as it leads them to free themselves from their respective unhappy marriages and to consider working and living together. An iconoclastic choice in an era when the bonds of marriage were sacred, when a woman had to be above all a good wife and mother, and possibly, depending on her social rank, a good housewife. If Lena (Isabelle Huppert) as a frustrated middle-class woman fits this model, Madeleine (Miou-Miou) is a passionate artist whose vital energy goes far beyond her marriage of convenience, even if the intensity of her feelings leads her to depressive episodes during which she returns to her parents’ home. An introduction set during the Second World War recalls the dramatic circumstances that led Lena to marry a man she did not love and Madeleine to lose the man with whom she was in love. If Madeleine easily gets rid of her second husband (played by Jean-Pierre Bacri, who is quite hilarious in his role as a failed comedian and a schemer, each one more messed up than the last), the same cannot be said for Lena, who has been stuck in a patriarchal relationship with Michel Korski (Guy Marchand) since 1942, sealed by the fact that he saved her from deportation by marrying her. The latter makes a touching composition as a man who is overwhelmed by his wife’s evolution and then devastated by her decision to leave him.
Genre: drama
Cast
Miou-Miou: Madeleine
Isabelle Huppert: Lena
Guy Marchand: Michel
Jean-Pierre Bacri: Costa
Soundtrack Luis Bacalov
