Sex shouldn’t be this boring — or painful
Kidney stones intersect with desire in Garcia’s From the Land of the Moon
On paper, From the Land of the Moon seems to have everything. Starring some of the biggest names in European cinema, and having been screened in competition at Cannes, this period piece screams prestige. Focusing on Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard), an erratic woman whose outbursts are largely based on her own carnal desires, Nicole Garcia’s latest film looks at the oppressive place of women in France’s post-war era. Gabrielle is married off to José (Alex Brendemühl), in the name of respectability, and in order to curtail her outspoken passion. Plagued by
kidney stones, Gabrielle’s eruptions of uncontrollable desire are matched only by her screaming and writhing in pain. Sent to recover at a health spa, she encounters injured soldier André Sauvage (Louis Garrel) and the two begin a heated affair, only to be torn apart when Gabrielle is cured.
Despite a frenzied plot poised
in the extremes of sex and death, and the exciting story of a woman who chooses to flaunt her desires in the face of patriarchal standards rather than navigate them, From the Land of the Moon is a bore. Gabrielle’s strange behaviour becomes reductive and repetitive despite its excess. The shock value of sexuality, with Cotillard nude from the waistdown within the first six minutes of the film, is never scandalizing nor meaningful. The choice of explicit sexual content, in the form of naked bodies and steamy love letters, becomes tired and lazy.
Alternating between fiery rages and dreamy, desirous trances, Gabrielle’s conflict between her wants and needs as they intersect with social repression are never deeply explored. Emotionally, she is flat, simplified by outdated nymphomania. Gabrielle never grows, nor do the characters around her. Cotillard’s portrayal of sexy madness is numbing in a film that never progresses emotionally.
From the Land of the Moon is not a bad movie. Warmly capturing the beauty of the south of France and with good performances from the main leads, it is certainly competently made. But attempts to veer into the controversial, through melodrama or sexual politics, never grow or transform. A heightened psycho-sexual drama, Garcia’s film doesn’t seem to say much of anything.