To international audiences, French cinema is the best example of bringing us films about love and desire – you only need to look to Amelie as a primary example. The recurring romantic genre helps sustain popularity for French cinema, and that idea isn’t lost on organisers of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival in Australia. Period drama A Simple Heart (Un coeur simple) delivers a love story lost to bad timing and a different sense of direction.

Conventional plot is kicked out the window for the most part as we follow the life of Felicite (Sandrine Bonnaire) in 1800’s Normandy, France – unhappy after she is separated from love Theo (Pascal Elbe). Mainstream films normally don’t lead as a love story and then go askew so early, but here the focus rests on Felicite through the next part of her life, looking after the house of Madame Mathilde Aubain (Marina Fois) and children Clemence and Paul. Based on one of Gustave Flaubert’s Three Tales (the writer known for classic Madame Bovary), A Simple Heart is a period drama that doesn’t focus on the love of intimacy, but rather that of family and the female bond.

Bonnaire does a fine job as Felicite, although you can’t help but sense that the character was written for a younger actress. The relationship between Felicite and Clemence (played by three actresses as she grows) is beautifully bittersweet throughout the first half of the film, with outside characters playing the jealousy cards, so it is disappointing that the latter half doesn’t hold up in comparison. There are instances of over-editing from director Marion Laine, who also adapted the screenplay – too many fade-to-blacks create an episodic feel that doesn’t sit well with the story. While a shift in focus towards Felicite’s bonding with her Master is an interesting turn, along with seeing how her world changes while she still appears exactly the same, the plot drags and you are distanced from all the major events, limiting emotion. This includes the end, which, without giving anything away, is a bit limp.

Verdict:

Relationships are the key in A Simple Heart, but the great first-half build-up leaves you hanging. The abruptness of the story will frustrate you but it has enough poignancy to keep you interested.

A Simple Heart screened as part of the 2009 Alliance Francaise French Film Festival.

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