Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud . Tucson Weekly . 09-26-96

Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud

DIRECTED BY: Claude Sautet

REVIEWED: 09-26-96

A moving, unsentimental film by Claude Sautet (Un Coeur en Hiver) about the friendship between a beautiful young woman (Emmanuelle Beart, fresh from her role in Mission Impossible) and an older man (Michel Serrault). Nelly is a stunning but poor woman living in Paris with a depressed husband who won't get out of bed. She falls under the kind patronage of Monsieur Arnaud, a wealthy but lonely older man. With his help, she leaves her husband and starts to move forward in life, while Monsieur Arnaud simultaneously begins to examine his past. Their relationship, though not sexual, comes to involve far more complex elements of love, romance, dependency, hate and desire. Though quite reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Red, the film is anything but derivative.

--Stacey Richter

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