A Clear-Eyed Examination of Love, Pain and Passion

Mad love is about madness as much as it is about love. And if irrational passion marks the beginning of an affair, what might be called a Newtonian Law of Relationships posits an equal but opposite reaction at the end. “Post Coitum� provides a hauntingly honest and provocative look at what an all-consuming love can in fact consume.

Called “Post Coitum, Animal Triste� in France, a title taken in turn from the Latin homily meaning all creatures are sad after sex, this film deals with the entire arc of one such relationship, examining the glorious passion of obsessive love as well as the accompanying chaos. In its clear-eyed look at the exhilarating and damaging power of raw emotion, “Post Coitum� manages to be at ease with both carnality and love in a way that links it with the grand tradition of French cinema.

Actress Brigitte Rouan not only stars in “Post Coitum,� she co-wrote and directed the film as well, and her three-sided participation is the key to its ability to remain nonjudgmental without sacrificing emotional intensity.

Given that the film opens with a sequence of Rouen’s Diane Clovier writhing in misery on her bed and screaming the name “Emilio,� we know going in that the romance we’re watching will not be without its agonies. Yet it is still intoxicating to watch the actress create empathy for Diane throughout the entire cycle of romance, allowing the audience to feel the joy and the pain right along with the character.

Diane Clovier is in her 40s, a confident and stylish editor at one of Paris’ more literary publishing houses. Confident enough in fact to barge in on one of her troublesome writers while he’s trying to sleep late and demand to know why he isn’t producing more pages. The writer, Francois Narou (Nils Tavernier, director Bertrand’s son), doesn’t respond well, but his roommate Emilio materializes out of nowhere to offer the editor some unexpected words of consolation.

Emilio likes to call himself a plumber, but he’s in fact a hydraulic engineer who works designing sanitation systems in the Third World. As played by Boris Terral, he is also seductiveness personified, a sensitive hunk with masses of luxuriant black curly hair, sensuous lips and the perpetually unshaven look only men who resemble models are allowed to cultivate.

Diane looks at Emilio and can’t believe what’s happening to her. She’s happily (if a trifle complacently) married to a lawyer named Philippe (Patrick Chesnais) with two of the best behaved teenage boys in all France as sons, and she is two decades older than Emilio. She tells him, “I’ve lived a whole life before you,� as if it’s supposed to mean something, but it doesn’t. These two simply can’t keep their hands off each other.

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One of the best things about “Post Coitum� is that it doesn’t moralistically shortchange the pleasure Diane and Emilio share. The couple’s exuberant and passionate scenes together, including so-French-you-could-burst moments like traffic-stopping embraces on the Champs-Elysees, underline the hypnotically sensual nature of the relationship. When she tells him, “You’ve woken me out of a long sleep,� he slyly shrugs and replies, “I’m Prince Charming. It’s my job.�

Paralleling Diane’s swooning relationship is her husband’s involvement as the lawyer for a neighbor, Madame Lepluche (veteran actress Francoise Arnoul), implicated in a different kind of passionate act. When her philandering husband of 43 years asked for a divorce, Madame Lepluche pierced an artery in his neck with a carving fork and watched him bleed to death.

True to her stated intention to show “how painful passion can be, and how stupid it can make you,� Rouen gradually darkens “Post Coitum’s� tone. As Diane gets more and more obsessively involved with Emilio, she doesn’t seem to care or even notice the ways in which she’s recklessly jeopardizing everything about her life, from her work to her family, that’s been important to her up to now. The only link to her past that remains unaffected is her commitment to help writer Francois through his new novel.

Traditionally, in films from “The Blue Angel� to “Of Human Bondage,� this detailing of the price of mad infatuation has been told with men as the protagonists. One of the great assets that Rouen brings to the flip side of the story is a wisdom that stops her from second-guessing her characters while allowing each their humanity. We may ache for Diane in her vulnerability, but we also see how difficult it would have been for her to act otherwise. “In this day and age,� one of the characters says, “being in love means compromise. Absolute passion can be a tragedy.� “Post Coitum� shows what that statement truly means.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: nudity and explicit sexual scenes.

‘Post Coitum’

Brigitte Rouan: Diane Clovier

Patrick Chesnais: Philippe Clovier

Boris Terral: Emilio

Nils Tavernier: Francois Narou

Jean-Louis Richard: Weyoman-Lebeau

Francoise Arnoul: Madame Lepluche

Released by New Yorker Films. Director Brigitte Rouan. Producer Humbert Balsan. Screenplay Brigitte Rouan, Santiago Amigorena, Jean-Louis Richard, Guy Zilberstein, Philippe Le Guay. Cinematographers Pierre Dupouey, Arnaud Leguy, Bruno Mistretta. Editor Laurent Rouan. Costumes Florence Emir, Marika Ingrato. Production design Roland Deville. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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* Playing at selected theaters around Southern California.