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O'Brien, Tom

Benavot sees this trend as fostered by a worldwide acceptance of an educational ideology of "individualism," i.e., education ought to meet the multi-faceted and evolving needs of the...

...Sophie's father's last name is Korski, presumably something like the origin of Diane Kurys's own name...
...By contrast, there are some scenes in the early part of the movie -- detailing how the women first met their husbands in World War II -- whose epic grandeur and shrill action indicate that Kurys could try her hand, equally, at another kind of movie and succeed grandly there as well...
...History of Spirituality and Elective Courses in spirituality and spiritual direction The Spirituality Concentration can be done within the Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S...
...Kramer, Ordinary People, Smash Palace, Shoot the Moon, or An Unmarried Woman -- most of which blame either men or women, but never both, for the breakup...
...When the two families race cars on a country road, he naturally gets sick and his parents have to stop to let him vomit...
...But employment offers a readily measurable yardstick for taxpayer dollars, and the business community's increasing interest in vocational programs generally promotes this perspective as well...
...Diane Kurys's attitude to males, in brief, seems related to her attitude to southern races...
...The predominant style, moreover -- the concentration on brief vignettes where significance emerges with understated, laconic emphasis -- is as sensuous and light as nouvelle cuisine...
...WESTON SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY Cambridge, Massachusetts ,< C k" __i' ii ' ' ~ ) 1922-1984 A National ]esuit Theological Center Announces a New Program in Spirituality To Begin September, 1984 There will be 3 Core Courses in Biblical Spirituality...
...Ironically, the latter film concerns a warmer, more inclusive feminism than Kurys offers us here...
...With his voice on a recording of "La Pomme" in the background and a Chevalier mask on her face, the little girl dances away with cute but awkward gestures and waves an apple with a herky-jerky motion in the air...
...But there appear to be other, reasons besides fact for their shoddy treatment...
...as Madeleine whispers to Lena when she first meets him, "You're not made for each other...
...M.) degree For further information contact: Rev...
...The transmission of specific technical skills in vocational education is seen to be "based on a narrow conception of individual capacities and abilities...
...Kramer, only this time the husband is punished, not the wife...
...TOM O'BRIEN (Tom O'Brien, one of the guest critics currently reviewing movies for Commonweal, teaches at the Manhattan School of Music...
...It concerns not just Sophie's mother Lena, but her friend, Madeleine, two French housewives who leave inadequate husbands for each other's company...
...The scene is delightful, a mark of director Diane Kurys's supple vision of ordinary things, a vision that has made her into one of the leading female ' directors of our time...
...To emphasize male impotence in a quasi-phallic setting is her ultimate comment on just how bad the y-chromosome really is...
...Theology of the Spiritual life...
...Like so much else in Entre Nous, this is factually true...
...Entre Nous thus proves that the French can make a divorce movie, our modem anti-romance, with as many half-truths as Americans...
...Take, for example, Madeleine's little boy, who first appears as a reluctant Indian chief at the school play, a passive contrast to little Sophie's energy...
...Sophie, the daughter of one of its heroines, is performing an imitation of Maurice Chevalier at a school play in the 1950s...
...like Madeleine, she is almost Nordic in appearance...
...There are some affectionate scenes between Michel and his two daughters, but they are never squared with his image as a poor husband...
...Take, for example, the presentation of the husbands, especially Michel...
...Entre Nous, like other films in this genre, is engaging and provocative...
...Thank heaven for little girls...
...At the end of Entre Nous we learn that the film is partly autobiographical, that Sophie resembles Diane Kurys herself, standing on a beachfront porch and watching her mother coolly inform her father that their marriage is over...
...Like Chevalier, the man is dismissed, here not with laughter but silence and an icy stare...
...they are not pretty...
...Entre Nous was preferred over The Return of Martin Guerre, a magnificent film reduced to a costume citation by the nominating process...
...its underlining, however, makes it psychologically suspicious...
...But he is seen as unsuitable for Lena, playing football with the daughters at a picnic, for example, when she is trying to read...
...The general praise for the movie thus at least suggests one thing: we are not yet as attuned to female insensitivity as to male...
...When Michel marries Lena, she doesn't know his last name...
...In part this is because the basic story in Entre Nous and the surface texture are so seductive and alluring...
...In revealing this, neither is the movie...
...But the scene is more significant, a kind of revenge for Chevalier's sexist condescension in films like Gigi, and revenge, as moralists have warned, can easily go too far...
...But one wonders what he is doing in this movie -- why the misfortunes of a little boy deserve such development in a film primarily about the parents of the other Commonweal: 242 children...
...Madeleine helps me live, I can't breathe without her," Lena passionately explains, the traditional line normally reserved for the other man in a French triangle...
...He establishes a garage after the war and showers his wife with middle-class respectability...
...Lena (Isabelle Huppert) and Madeleine ~Miou-Miou) meet at the school play, and soon find in each other more mutual help and support than they get from their bumbling or loutish spouses...
...In Entre Nous, names play a key role in the sexual politics...
...There is, perhaps, an even greater problem with the movie...
...Weston School of Theology 3 Phillips Place Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 492-1960 20 April 1984:243...
...Entre Nous was the official French nominee at the Oscars...
...Benavot sees this trend as fostered by a worldwide acceptance of an educational ideology of "individualism," i.e., education ought to meet the multi-faceted and evolving needs of the individual...
...Of course, perhaps these husbands were this way, and the film merely a faithful record...
...Behind both gestures, moreover, is a pattern of scenes that makes not for feminism but homophobia, the film's dark side...
...He serves in her camp as a legionnaire, marries her, and escapes with her over the Alps to Italy and relative safety...
...In stereotyping half the human race, Entre Nous is really no worse than most other recent movies about divorce -- Kramer vs...
...He is a hard-working, mostly loving, swarthy vulgarian...
...He meets Lena, a Belgian Jew, as she awaits deportation east at the beginning of World War II...
...9 II I I IIII I I I I I I [ Screen u DIANE KURYS STRIKES BACK O NE SCENE suggests both the charm and danger of Entre Nous...
...J. Frank Devine, S.J...
...Life can begin again at thirty," Madeleine explains, a line that brought knowing approval from many way over thirty in the audience...
...To focus on such incidents makes this no ordinary autobiography, but it is, unfortunately, part of Kurys's total world view...
...when she finds out, she is indignant (even though he just busted her from internment through the marriage...
...Entre Nous, after all, is so au courant...
...So far, so good: Entre Nous on this level is a tale of grit and determination...
...Indeed, the dismissal of the tearful spouse at the end of Entre Nous parallels the dismissal at the end of Kramer vs...
...Lena doesn't look as Jewish as her husband...
...Perhaps additional impetus is given to this view by rapidly changing work environments resulting from technology...
...Of course, perhaps he was...
...it is also unconsciously sexist...
...The most telling incident occurs when he is unable to unlock a bathroom stall while his mother, Lena, and her two daughters wait outside observing what a ninny he is...
...Lena exclaims against the obvious Jewishness of Korski, adding that, with her maiden name o f " Weber," they could at least pass for German...
...Yet if one takes a look at the nation's unemployment rate, much less at that of the young or of minorities, one realizes that, even by this measure, Congress and its national educational policy, so far, falls short...
...degree or the Master of Theology (Th...
...Madeleine's husband, like Michel, is dark and short...
...Though her husband Michel (Guy Marchand) wrecks their first boutique in a jealous rage, the pair regroup and conquer...
...To paraphrase Hobbes a bit, _the two husbands are vulgar, either brutish or nincompoop, and short -- a physical side of the contrast to their wives that has, perhaps, racial significance...
...Even the next generation of males is klutzy, or at least must be remembered that way...
...each non-English speaking nation is allowed to nominate a film through their own version of a national film board...
...She meanwhile puts up with Costa, an underemployed actor who peddles art in his spare time (it turns out to be stolen) or hijacked shirts (they turn out to be sleeveless...
...Martin Guerre, set in the sixteenth century, was apparently adjudged passd...
...The vocational education community continues to debate whether"employability" rather than employment is the better means for assessing the success of programs...
...But despite hints of lesbian affection there is no fatale in Lena's attraction to Madeleine: all they want to do is set up shop together, literally...
...The problem is not in Kurys' s art, or pride in Sophie's mother and her friend, but a series of clues that show us that the director -for all her sophistication -- does not know her Freudian slip is showing...

Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 8


 
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