Rating of
4/4
"Watch us well, Jules!"
Arbogast1960 - wrote on 03/30/08
I am not an especially romantic person--on a scale from the cynical to the romantic, I reside decidedly toward the former end. But if ever there were a romance worth loving, it's Jules and Jim, a tragic love triangle tinged with whimsy, featuring a mesmerizing, timeless performance by Jeanne Moreau. Like much of Truffaut's work (and early Godard, before the spirit of Marx left his soul withered and parched), there is an almost indescribable energy to the film, a manifest joy that is infectious as the director experiments with myriad filmmaking techniques. I always marvel at the way the film makes wholly believable the title characters' obsession with Moreau's Catherine--she is shockingly insensitive and self-absorbed, driving the film to its calamitous conclusion, and yet one never doubts for a moment that either Jules or Jim is (or should be) hopelessly, haplessly devoted to her. This is in no small measure due to Moreau, one of cinema's most enchanting actresses.
