DVDs in Review

Nous ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble

Title: Nous ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble (We Won’t Grow Old Together) (1972)

Release date: August 24 2009

Certificate: 12

Format: DVD

DVD RRP: £19.99

Rating: 4/5

Few break up films have the raw emotional power of ‘We Won’t Grow Old Together’. The titles does essentially say it all, but what director Maurice Pialat is interested in is the details.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Pialat himself, Jean (Jean Yanne sporting the thickest sideburns in cinematic history) and Catherine (Marlene Jobert) are the couple on the rocks with Jean being the one to always wearing her down to mask his own insecurities.

Really he is married and while the scenes with his wife are brief, they’re also starkly effective. What the audience is afforded is a view at a leading man who doesn’t have all that much going for him but is completely compelling.

Like with the films of John Cassavetes, it’s what isn’t said that drives the narrative, while the story is peppered with human characteristics. As the film progresses over the last three months of its six-year affair, Catherine learns how to fend for herself but keeps falling back into his destructive arms.

Jean is a documentary filmmaker but seems to be at a loss of his own reality, but as Pialat is a filmmaker too, perhaps this is his documentary on his own life – a film within a film.

‘We Won’t Grow Old Together’ is tough but an ultimately rewarding insight into a breakup of an affair . It may not appeal to casual viewers but those who hold a love for French cinema and great acting should want to give this a try on the Master of Cinema’s typically great DVD line.