MOVIE REVIEW : ‘La Discrete’: Beautifully Played Game of Seduction

Few actions can be more disconcerting than a steady gaze, fixed coolly on the act of love. In “La Discrete” (at the Ken Cinema through Dec. 3), the young French writer-director Christian Vincent does just that. With a scientist’s curiosity and a jeweler’s eye, he lays bare a seduction, body and soul.

Following in the literary footsteps of the Stendhals, Flauberts and Sacha Guitrys, all those French writers who excel at anatomizing romance, Vincent adopts a veneer of sang-froid, tricks us into observing a seduction as if it were a game. Then he forces us, and his central character, Antoine (Fabrice Luchini), to face the consequences.

The movie has a delightful lucidity and moral balance. And though Vincent is making his first feature, he doesn’t act like a tyro; he has the style and assurance of a master. The soft muted colors, the precise dialogues, the atmosphere of utter clarity, even the bare-bones piano-solo music score--composed of fragments of Scarlatti and Schubert and Satie-like original themes by Jay Gottlieb--seduce us into viewing this world and life as a game.

Furthermore, a game that seems to be fixed. The setup is simple. Our sometime narrator, Antoine is an egoistic young writer who verbally bullies his mistresses, and who, at the film’s start, has apparently driven his latest, art curator Solange (Marie Bunel), right out of his life. Antoine’s plight amuses his older friend, Jean (Maurice Garrel), a rare bookseller and editor who proposes that he turn his erotic travail into literary capital. Following Jean’s instructions, Antoine will seduce a young woman picked at random, leave her, and describe the whole episode in a journal, which will then be published: a writer’s ultimate revenge against a world of messy disappointments.

Antoine accepts. Not as obviously misogynist as bachelor Jean, he’s perhaps intrigued at the notion of carnality without compassion. And Antoine’s specific field is parliamentary or political speechwriting; he’s used to elaborate lying.

In a way, we can supply the rest. Antoine will meet a girl; he will follow the plan; he will fall in love; someone will be chastened. This is a French form, so fixed that we--almost like Jean himself--can supply the rules of the game.

But while “La Discrete” has the predictability of classicism, it also has the freshness and lyricism of true wit. How could we predict the buoyant, crooked-smiling gamine charm of Antoine’s target, typist Catherine (Judith Henry)? Or the curious byways into which she will lead Antoine and us? Or the layers of sadness and malice concealed beneath Jean’s veneer of kindly interest? Or the final vein of childish wistfulness sprung loose in Antoine? Or the chilling poignancy with which “La Discrete” closes?

Vincent’s style has already been widely compared to Eric Rohmer’s, which makes some sense. Like Rohmer, Vincent likes to stage intellectual dialogues that conceal moral or sexual stratagems. And “La Discrete’s” male star, Luchini--who plays Antoine with such wonderfully humorous objectivity that some audiences may wind up despising him--could be Rohmer’s favorite actor. Besides having appeared in four of his films, Luchini even looks a bit like Rohmer: a shorter, more nervous version.

Yet the comparison is too facile. Vincent, whose own favorites are Renoir, Pagnol and Guitry, has more of a sense of evil and mischief than Rohmer, who dislikes showing anything he doesn’t admire. And, in the unadmirable world of “La Discrete,” the honesty of Catherine marks her as an outsider, while Antoine’s generosity or sensitivity is a greater handicap than his callousness.

The title refers to a facial mole. By 17th-Century French custom, according to Antoine, a mole, placed like Catherine’s, on the chin, denotes discretion. (Placed like Jean’s, on the forehead, it denotes “majesty.”) As in Antoine’s mole map, the outwardly cool and inwardly compassionate “La Discrete” invites us to stare fixedly at each character’s physiognomy, searching for clues to the souls beneath. Life is not a game, but “La Discrete” is: exquisite, humorous, touching, knowing, beautifully played. The characters may lose, but their audience won’t.

‘La Discrete’

Fabrice Luchini: Antoine

Judith Henry: Catherine

Maurice Garrel: Jean

Marie Bunel: Solange

An MK2 Productions USA presentation. Director Christian Vincent. Producer Alain Rocca. Screenplay by Vincent, Jean-Pierre Ronssin. Cinematographer Romain Winding. Editor Francois Ceppi. Costumes Marie Malterre. Music Jay Gottlieb, Schubert, Scarlatti. Set decorator Sylvie Olive. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (language, sensuality).