Haut les coeurs! (1999) Online

My wife died of cancer and I lived through a situation in some ways very similar to that depicted in this extraordinary film . I can vouch for its truth. As a work of art it captures the awful complexity of the reactions of those near a person suffering from serious illness, and the way they become a sort of appendage of the technology which may, or may not, save them. The perfomances are excellent. It enlarges one's perception of the world and people, and one cannot ask more of a film than that.

Though serious illnesses are commonplace plot enhancers (and easy tearjerkers) in many dramas and melodramas, there are actually few movies that deal with the disease condition itself. In "Philadelphia", for instance, the hero fought against the system more than against AIDS. In "E.R.", we suffer a lot with the patients but the doctors are still the heroes. "Haut les coeurs!" (that could roughly be translated as "Be brave!") tells the story of Emma, a young woman who learns at (almost) the same time that she is pregnant and that she is suffering from an advanced breast cancer. We follow her, and the people around her, during her private war against the disease. We share her hopes, doubts (will she be able to keep her baby), and terrors. It's hard to say that such a movie is "pleasant" and the subject is not of the popular kind. There are many reasons why one would want to see it, though. The first is the documentary aspect : it is largely autobiographical, and rarely we have seen on movie such a detailed account, both at technical level (how the war is fought) and psychological (how people react, doctors, friends, lover, brother). This not an abstract disease, but a real one, and a strong reminder that there's not romanticism in fatal sickness. In one funny, though terrible, scene, Emma's tells what she thinks about Nature's sadistic ways of killing people to a "natural health" supporter. The other reason is that it's not a documentary, but a fiction, and an efficient, even suspensful one, with lighter moments. Like any good fiction, it also works at a more symbolic level. How can we cope with impending death ? How can we help our loved ones ? Karin Viard's portrayal of Emma is unforgettable and put her definitely on the top of the contemporary actresses.

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'Haut les coeurs!' is the kind of film you could imagine Hollywood reducing/inflating into a mawkish, overblown weepie. Its story - a pregnant woman discovers she has breast cancer, and must choose between her life and the baby's - seems ripe for tears, hugs, screams, big set-pieces full of tearful speeches and hugs, and maybe the odd miracle or, that wonderful thing, a sacrificial mother.

This is what a snooty 'arthouse' lover is supposed to say. 'Haut' certainly would not be made in America. It is very low-key, so studious in its efforts to avoid melodrama as to become numbing. Although the director's style focuses relentlessly on the female lead, and is full of close-ups and mid-shots, although we are given access to all the major plot developments, and her reactions to them, as well as of those closest to her, this is a strangely distanced film, which manages to keep a dignified restraint while seeming to show all. Although inside we must assume a whirlpool of terror, nausea, dread, mental breakdown (and I can assume, I've been there) the film's form never shows this, Emma's environment is still shot with such an uunnaturally clean image that even the dust seems sterilised. This mode is very similar to the films of Agnes Varda, especially early ones such as 'Le Bonheur' - although the story and settings are realistic, they are heightened, as if airbrushed, through composition and colour, so that this artifice conflicts jarringly with the very physical torments endured by Emma.

This is such a decent, understanding picture I feel monstrous for suggesting that is is actually structured around a pun on the French words for pregnant and breast - 'enceinte' and 'sein', a pun that expresses the paradox that Emma holds life and death inside her, and that these aren't some metaphysical ideas, but firmly linked to a body that is both growing and disintegrating (although Anspach isn't above using this paradox metaphorically with regard to Emma's social relationship, or the irony that it is her nurturing breast that is cancerous). this culminates in the horrific situation whereby Emma must give birth and have her breast removed on the same day. The only other scene that manages to break the anti-septic calm is when Simon shaves Emma's head against a flaming red background, literally disfiguring her femininity. A little bit more of this would have been to my taste, but then I've always been a sucker for melodrama.

This is a film where the usual workings of cinematic desire are reversed, where the woman and her body are not near-abstractions to be fetishised, but bodies full of the decay cinema is supposed to suspend. The absence of Emma's breast becomes a different kind of fetishism that turns voyeuristic desire on its head.

'Haut' seems to show everything, but does it? Anspach keeps inserting plot elemennnnts that might lurch toward melodrama, but are left tantalisingly undeveloped - what did Simon, one of those obnoxiously selfish intellectual males French cinema throws up ad nauseum, get up to with his female colleague? What did Emma do with the doctor after the nightclub? One of the most significent plot-points, dubiously echoing Emma's corporeal absence, is Olivier's big lie, his pretence to be abroad so he can avoid the reality of his sister's condition (I'm with him, I'm afraid). The final sequences, in their gleaming white sheen, though still realistic, seem hallucinatory, dreamlike, fetishistic, even spiritual. This is a film with more mystery (in both senses - this is a film about a mother and child, after all) than first appears.

Quietly moving and powerful, this story of a young woman finding out in rapid succession that she is pregnant, but has advanced breast cancer is handled with both and raw honesty and film- making delicacy that would have eluded a melodramatic Hollywood studio approach.

The choice facing her is a terribly difficult one – take the most aggressive therapy course, but lose the baby, or hold off radiotherapy until the baby is developed enough so that she can have a Cesarian birth, while perhaps hurting her own chances for survival.

Karin Viard is lovely in the lead, bringing a wonderful mix of strength and vulnerability. A movie about a small triumph of the human spirit, in spite of the rebellion of the human body.

Full disclosure: my mother died of cancer, and I was around to watch her sink lower and lower over three years. So I know about the desperate self-delusions that the patients and their families go through. The vacations that are planned and never take place. The career choices that are put on hold for now, but really forever. The attempts at reconciliations between family members that don't bear fruit. I guess I've seen it all.

I liked One True Thing because it was hard to watch the family suffering, and Meryl Streep was excellent. My Breast, with Meredith Baxter, was a simpler story, but still effective. Pialat's La Gueule ouverte is perhaps the strongest of them all--the emotions that family feels are sometimes terrifying in their violence. Solveig Anspach just isn't up to this standard. The numbing scenes of chemo, and the consultations, with the doctors seeming to agree when they really don't, go on far too long. We get it, no need to underline the message.

Karin Viard has become a real star over the last few years, and she deserves the Cesar she won for this role. Julien Cottereau, with his Prince Mishkin air, impressed me as the brother who would rather be anywhere but near his sister. I just wanted to see more passion, less dumb acceptance of life's dirty tricks.