MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON. L'amour? Not sure!

Usually the purpose of a love story is the empathetic pleasure derived from the natural melting of boundaries between the audience and the lovers, in that we are encouraged to feel everything that the characters are feeling, and it makes us feel good.
Here, in this dreary little French film (that's sold as a modern day BRIEF ENCOUNTER), it’s actively discouraged. In fact, virtually all embellishment of emotions seems frowned on. It’s like a 70 year old stern nun with a stick up her arse directed this, and it’s as emotionally cold as a High Definition porn flick.
Yes, it’s clear that the creative choices of the director were to simply observe - a dispassionate static camera throughout - like a security camera that happened to catch pieces of information accidentally, and then pretended it wasn’t actually interested. The lovers say very little to each other – he’s an illiterate builder, she’s a chilly children’s teacher unable to set down roots anywhere, or even acknowlegde her emotions. When they’re together, they have minimal conversation, and it’s always about irrelevant surface level shit – like which CD you like listening to, and it leads to nothing meaningful. I wanted to jump into the screen and pull their underwear down, and force them to touch each other's naughty bits. It was THAT frustrating.
However, the aesthetic of the film IS frustration, so to deny my frustration might be selling it short. It reminded me a lot of Jane Campion’s BRIGHT STAR – a film about John Keats and poetry and romance, that was SO unromantic and dispassionate, it was like watching two insects slowly die of suffocation in a glass jar. The strange thing about this French flick was the definite 'style' of not lighting the characters in the scene – so you kind of have to find them every time. They are enmeshed in their surroundings – unable to escape. They blend in with the drab wallpapers, grey walls, and cluttered kitchens, unable to wrestle out a unique identity that might separate them from their environment. In a Hollywood movie, they would be so backlit, they would seem to walk on air, radiant like the Virgin Mary or some other airborne fantasy. And the camera would have definitely zoomed right in on the kiss (with a deafening violin surge) – but not here – we’re virtually excluded from it, in bizarre silence. It's almost embarassing. Ugh!
In fact, there’s no musical soundtrack to ‘steer’ the emotions in this film at all.
Creatively, the net effect of a film like this is curiosity. I was impressed with the audacity of the creative choices, though sometimes wondered if it was directorial laziness or extraordinary restraint. But ultimately these choices didn’t become greater than the sum of their parts – the movie feels hollow, undernourished and unsubstantial. In a porno, if you don’t get aroused, it’s a failure. In a love story, if you don’t feel emotionally transported, you’re just standing at the station, watching a train disappear into the distance, with your ticket in your hand. And that’s annoying.