Le journal du séducteur
France,
1995, 95 min
Shown in 1996
CREDITS
- dir
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Danièle Dubroux
- prod
-
Paulo Branco
- scr
-
Danièle Dubroux
- cam
-
Laurent Machuel
- editor
-
Jean-François Naudon
- cast
-
Chiara Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud, Hubert Saint Macary, Serge Merlin, Mathieu Amalric, Danièle Dubroux, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Micheline Presle
- source
-
Gemini Productions, 73, rue Saint Denis, 75001 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-42-33-12-13
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COMMENTS
Chiara Mastroianni in person.
OTHER
If you doubt that Kierkegaard could serve as an aphrodisiac, observe the romantic obsessions kicked off by a copy of his novel Diary of a Seducer in this eccentric Parisian comedy of erotic affinities. The tome is selectively lent to attractive young women by Grégoire, a handsome, diffident philosophy student whose libido is cloaked in intellectual jargon. Claire, captive to Grégoire’s (or the book’s?) magnetism, is also pursued by Sébastien, a boyish would-be seducer who keeps a more candidly horny journal of his own. Like deadpan Alice in Parisland, the smitten Claire negotiates a bewildering landscape of strange, sinister and possibly supernatural people and events in her dogged pursuit of Grégoire (or is he pursuing her?). There’s his grandmother, a faded but still histrionic movie queen played by veteran vedette Micheline Presle (a pleasure to see looking glamorous and lovely); his literate prof, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who is enamored of Grandmère to the point of violence; Claire’s own mother, a cut-to-the-chase single mom played with elegance and wit by the film’s director; and Claire’s shrink, who suffers a near-fatal attack of counter-transference. Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of Marcello and Catherine Deneuve, brings the screen presence of her forebears to the part of Claire, a girl who hangs onto her composure in the face of all.
FACTOID #162
The Stand-In (1985), Nina Takes a Lover (1994), Dream for an Insomniac (1996), Dream with the Fishes (1997), Teknolust (2002) and Dopamine(2003) were not only screened at Festival but were also shot in San Francisco.
