我的爱1986

MAX, MON AMOUR received a tepid reaction when it debuted inCannes in 1986, a French-American co-production under the rein of the late Japanese provocateurNagisa Ôshima (1932-2013),which would become his penultimate feature film.

Since then, it has become a succès de scandale which isless being watched than hyped due to its subversive content, but in fact, most of the time, it suffices as a tongue-in-cheek comedy, a marital satire borne out ofJean-Claude Carrière’s urtext, Peter Jones (Higgins) isa liberal-minded British diplomat working and living in Paris, one day, to his utter dismay, he finds out the paramour of his wife Margaret (Rampling), is a male chimpanzee named Max, beggar belief, the couple decides to try out a kind ofménage-à-trois by bringing Max into their official residence, where also lives their towhead school-age son Nelson (Hovik), and believe it or not, in the end of the story, their co-habitation actually works.

Cagey about the salacious details of the relationship between Margaret and her“supposed" primate lover,Ôshima sides with the husband’s point-of-view to parse the couple's tug-of-war, firstly, Peter takes up the gauntlet to show his magnanimity by accepting the situation without letting it get under his skin, then, driven by curiosity and jealousy, his attitude towards Max seesaws between hostility and respectable concern, an experiment of corroborating the inter-species sexual act is a bust, whereas an episode of shotgun scare is just a cheeky practice of cheap tension.

It is an immoral cock-and-bull story, menace is palpable, but vice has never descended into the picture andwhat sagaciously affirming is the film’s brazen stance on the dynamism between the couple, it is always Margaret who has the say-so in their states of affairs, however preposterous and quixotic, there is a deep respect unites them as an entity, Peter stoutly fights her corner in the face of extrinsic parties, whether it is a zoologist or a neuropsychologist, accordingly, she also quite frank about her feelings, even stays on friendly terms with Peter’s secretary-cum-lover Camille (a gratingly loud Diana Quick).

It is a surprise that Ôshima chooses not to go out on a limb in salting the plot by bestowing Max with a feral complexion, alternatively played by real chimps and stunts in verisimilar costumes (solely by this reviewer’s reckoning), Max is presented as a meek pet, not dangerous, sulky at most, albeit his human-like size, even becomes mawkishly lovelorn and loses his appetite when Margaret is absent. Granted, there is a touching and tender naiveness seething beneath its surrealistic premise, which also is not exactly congruent withÔshima’s make-up if one might venture to surmise.

Both Rampling and Higgins tackle the thorny subject with bravura, what percolates from their collective effort is a beguilingly unfeigned sophistication stemming from a bourgeois background, andÔshima conspiratorially sends up their caprices with deadpan seriousness, not to mention a non sequitur triumph appended to the part where Max momentarily goes missing in the woods.

Ultimately, MAX, MON AMOUR doesn’t come to provoke moralists, but offers a keyhole for the audience to observe a behavioral pattern says as much of living beings' universality as of their idiosyncrasy, the point is made, but reverberations are somewhat deadened when Ôshima settles for a middle road between "funny and die" in his overall approach.

referential point:Ôshima’s MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983, 8.5/10)

A

大岛渚即使是拍摄外语片，还是带来了一丝东亚式的隐秘情感。解密的关键在“钥匙孔”“黑猩猩”“女仆过敏”或明或暗的几个意向上。

钥匙孔=窥视欲，男性通过钥匙孔窥视伴侣与他人/兽的性事而获得“满足感”，是不是很东亚？但这样理解的话影片却仅仅最多展现女主拥抱着猩猩，委实可惜，祖拉斯基就真拍出这种画面来了。

“黑猩猩”则是男主对女主消逝的爱意的具象化存在，孤独的女主发现孤独的“它”，男主对其由抵触到最后的接受，可最后女主让影片氛围陡然变奏的独白，似乎又体现出其对这份失而复得的爱意的患得患失感，竟是下定决心若将面临破裂时刻，宁愿亲手终结这份感情，男性的情感去了又来，又可能再走，女性却再难以承受。

“过敏”这个点在影片的结尾之前都是作为滑稽元素而存在，可当女仆道出其真正过敏源时，我才敢确定猩猩与男主的联系。

关于影片基调，表面上看倒是颇有功力的神经/荒诞喜剧，而大岛渚在尺度上对于这个题材来说表现得颇为“清新”。