Blu-ray Review: Feeling of Timelessness in ‘La Vie de Bohéme’

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CHICAGO – What is amazing about the texture of this 1992 film version of the 1848 Henri Murger novel, “La Vie de Bohéme,” is that it looks like it could have been filmed during the French New Wave period of the late 1950s/early ‘60s. The Criterion Collection offers a stunning new Blu-ray transfer of a now classic adaptation.

HollywoodChicago.com Blu-ray rating: 4.5/5.0
Rating: 4.5/5.0

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er do well represents a form of art – writing, painting, music – but each only practices it when short on the rent. For creative types, this is not a revelation, but an actuality. But story-wise, this enjoyable, crafty and semi-serious adventure has appeal for all.

La Vie de Bohéme
An Art Transaction Takes Place in ‘La Vie de Bohéme’
Photo credit: The Criterion Collection

Marcel (André Wilme) is an impoverish writer who is being evicted from his modest Paris apartment. While roaming the streets, he meets Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää), a Albanian painter both equally poor and in France illegally. Together they scratch to survive, taking into their coterie the muscian Shaunard (Kari Väänänen), the very tenant who took over Marcel’s previous apartment. Things change when Marcel gets a magazine project, and Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi (Evelyne Didi).

You’d have a sharp eye to guess this was filmed in the early 1990s. The proceedings happen in a non-specific time period, but with the look of the film and the context of the composition, it would be logical to guess late 1950s or early ‘60s. If this was shown in a double feature with Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” it might seem as if they were shot in the same year. Director Kaurismäki doesn’t have the stylistic camera moves of the New Wave, but does have the same presence of characters that populate his Paris.

La Vie de Bohéme
‘La Vie de Bohéme,’ on Blu-ray & DVD
Photo credit: The Criterion Collection

Those rogues are so intriguing, both disgusting and instinctive. One of the funnier players is Blancheron (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a Parisian art collector who seems to appear whenever Rodolfo needs a few francs to make rent. The American director Sam Fuller makes a cameo as the publisher who gives Marcel the magazine gig, and memorably fills the screen with a key scene. It’s the weight that each of the characters bring that provides the heft of the circumstances, and they are fascinating to just watch, as much as experience within the story.

The women in the film are interesting because they just can’t help themselves in their attachments to the slackers. Besides Mimi, there is Musette (Christine Murillo), who becomes a Girl Friday and quasi-lover to Marcel – regretfully leaving him when the money runs dry – and sadly knowing that he never really was attached to her. They both should know better, but they don’t, and that becomes a very delicate and human quality in the film’s emotion.

The Criterion Collection adds a treasure chest of extras with the film, starting with an essay booklet entitled “The Seacoast of Bohemia” by critic Luc Sante. The package has both Blu-ray and DVD formats, both with an hour long documentary about the film called “Where is Musette?,” an interview with actor André Wilms and newly translated subtitles. The digital transfer is magnificent, with all of the cinematographer’s “black and white” subtleties on display. It is a film to feast upon.

“La Vie de Boheme” may inspire to chuck all the tech toys and four wheel drives, and live like a roustabout in Paris. Maybe there isn’t enough squalor at present to indulge in the City of Lights, but there has to be bohemians, and their life.

“La Vie de Boheme” was released on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection on January 14th. Featuring Matti Pellonpää, Evelyne Didi, André Wilms, Kari Väänänen and Samuel Fuller. Written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki. Not rated.

HollywoodChicago.com senior staff writer Patrick McDonald

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

© 2014 Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com

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