If You Don’t, I Will

Sophie Fillières’ relationship comedy If You Don’t, I Will (Arrête ou je continue) expresses a statement not necessarily of dialogue but of intention. Forty-somethings Pomme (Emmanuelle Devos, Violette) and Pierre (Mathieu Amalric, Venus in Fur) have reached the point in their pairing where action is needed to quell their inertia. If one doesn’t instigate change of some sort, the other might have to.

It’s not difficult to see why such a phrase applies to a duo too complacent to care for the niceties that must have once marked their love but are now conspicuous in their absence. Their rift is made all the more pronounced by the absence left by their son Romain (Nelson Delapalme), now off living his own college life of freedom, but its niggles are of the type left to fester over a considerable period.  Conversations now have the flavour of pettiness and bickering; social interactions outside the home leave both guilty and unfulfilled. Confrontation – ‘do you love me?’ Pomme asks – goes nowhere. Their normal routine continues until she refuses to go home during an otherwise ordinary weekend hiking trip.

At all times in Fillières’ effort, the writer/director’s first since 2009’s Pardon My French, the central couple sit at the opposite ends of whatever spectrum might just apply to their current situation. It is this chasm the filmmaker exploits, not just in the story, but also in the styling. When Pomme provokes, Pierre remains silent, the film varying its rhythm to their differences. When she wanders around the forest shot as an increasingly serene component of her enormous surroundings, he stands out, ill-fitted in his life and tightly framed as well as constrained, the aesthetic mirroring of the emotions at play obvious.

The space that grows in long-term bonds can be impossible to capture on screen; however Fillières’ achieves just that in a steady, assured offering that combines its serious subject with farce. Little in the narrative causes surprise, the acquaintance many will have with the awkwardness on display part of its charms, just as the feature’s familiarity enhances its fluid running. If You Don’t, I Will‘s relatable nature helps excuse the overall slightness of a film that’s nothing more than the fragmenting of two people who are together through habit and only beginning to accept that they may be better apart. Perceptiveness need not always be clouded in complexity, though, as this case points out.

In Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument and Kings and Queen, Devos and Amalric have shared the screen previously, their repeated cinematic entanglements an amiable real-life accompaniment to their fictional coupling here. Their opposition is purposefully pronounced, yet their performances are intricate and intimate, again ripped from all-too-evident actuality. Allowing revelations to surface naturally in their characterisations is a skill that cannot be underestimated. Fleshing out protagonists in a standard situation heightened by the absurd and the amusing is handled with precision, even if Devos is gifted a broader range of material than Amalric.

Accordingly, in theme, presentation and portrayal, If You Don’t, I Will offers a quiet whispering of truths about lengthy relationships. It smiles sweetly as a palatable comedy-drama hybrid, touches tender points as a sharp reflection of sad realities, and – plain as it all may be – hits the right spot of domestic heartbreak and hope.