Ever heard people throw around famous directors??? names and think ???What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through ???Battleship Potemkin???? Fortunately, now there is! We???ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles???and the pretentious clerks at Kim???s Video???so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Jules and Jim, directed by Francois Truffaut, is considered one of the most important films of the French New Wave. You might have heard of Truffaut—he’s often contrasted with Jean-Luc Godard (not to be confused with Captain Jean-Luc Picard). Anyhow, the big difference? Godard is more cynical, Truffaut is more sentimental.
(That said, some people might argue that Jules and Jim manages to be at once both annoyingly cutesy and inherently depressing. Then again, those same people might also be known as “us.”)
So the film opens with a description of the friendship between Jules, a shy Austrian, and Jim, a womanizing Frenchman. (So that’s where that totally unfounded “stereotype” comes from!) They spend every day together, translating poems for each other in their respective languages. All of which is so extremely romantic you have to continually remind yourselves that these two men aren’t actually gay; they???re just European. Anyways, finally Jules tires of spending his nights serenading a horny Frenchman and asks for Jim???s help in finding women. Sadly, he doesn???t like any of the ones he meets, so he turns to (ahem) “professionals” but ultimately leaves “unsatisfied.”
Then Jules meets Therese, an anarchist girl who asks him to put her up for the night. And man, is Therese quirky! She even does a “steam engine” trick, where she puts the lit end of a cigarette in her mouth and blows smoke out the other end. (C’est tres chic, n’est pas?) Powerless to resist her sexually charged parlor tricks, Jules – a sad, emo bastard – falls for her immediately following their one night stand. Unfortunately, she meets a man in a café the very next morning, does her ???steam engine??? again and goes off to have sexual relations with him! (Zut alors.) Jim tells Jules not to worry, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. And he speaks from experience. Jim, apparently, slept with a hot little fish named Gilberte the night before, but—unlike Jules—had the wherewithal to leave before the sun came up because, “If I [had] stayed any longer, we???d practically be married.”
Later, Jules and Jim visit their friend Albert, who knows a lot of artists, which he proves by subjecting them to a boring slideshow of ancient sculptures. They???re inexplicably mesmerized by one of a woman???s face, and go to an Adriatic island the very next day to see it. For some reason, they don???t speak of it until the next day (Truffaut characters are all so whimsical!) but when they do, they realize they???d follow any woman with a smile like the sculpture???s.
And a few days later, they meet Catherine (played by Jeanne Moreau), who, coincidentally, has the exact same face as the statue. Quelle coincidence! Natch, Jules falls for her, and starts spending every waking moment with her.
A month later, Jules introduces Jim to Catherine. Bizarrely, Catherine decides to dress in drag and call herself “Thomas” that day—no real reason, she???s just playful like that! In response, Jules and Jim are moved, “as if by a symbol they don???t understand” (maybe, we don???t know, they like men?)
Anyway, for a while they all hang out, and Catherine continues to impress them—but not us!—with her crazy sponteneity. [Ed: Catherine reminds us of what it would be like if Miranda July and Wes Anderson had a child, and oh, God, let???s hope they never actually procreate.] Next up, Catherine and Jules get married. Then WWI breaks out, and they???re tragically separated. Meanwhile, Jim and Jules are on opposite sides, and are afraid that they???ll kill each other.
Surprise! They???re all conveniently still alive when the war ends. Jim goes to visit Jules and Catherine, who now have a daughter named Sabine. But it turns out that Catherine is just too spunky for marriage/monogamy, and has already cheated on Jules three times. Catherine and Jim have a long talk about their lives, and Jim says he “understands” her. She replies, “I don???t want to be understood.” Take that, Frenchie!
Several days later, Jim and Catherine sleep together, and Catherine asks Jim to move into the house. Jules knows what???s going on, but doesn???t really have a problem with it. The narrator helpfully explains, ???They were known in the village as the three idiots, but otherwise they were well-liked. Life was one long holiday.???
That is, until Jim and Catherine try to get pregnant. It???s not working, so they decide to break up???but not before having sex one last time. Ironically, this is the romp in the sack that gets Catherine pregnant. But then, tragically, the child dies in the womb. So many plot twists! So Jim leaves her and marries Gilberte, that girl he had sex with way in the beginning of the movie.
Catherine, jealous, tries to shoot him with a revolver, but he escapes. Then, somehow, everything (seemingly!) goes back to normal, and Jim, Jules and Catherine go out to the country together. Catherine, having gone all the way from “eccentric” to “crazy bitch,” tells Jim to get in the car with her, and tells Jules to ???watch us well.??? Then she promptly turns around and drives the car into a lake.
And yes, Catherine and Jim die. Jules has them both cremated, and their ashes are ???sealed in separate compartments.??? In the final line of the film, the narrator tells us ???Catherine had always wanted hers scattered to the winds from a hilltop, but that was against regulations.??? Oh, that Catherine. Unconventional to the bitter end.
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