The pursuit of love isn’t always like a romantic comedy. Sometimes it’s a little more tragic. Occasionally, it’s like sticking your hand in a ceiling fan, or an itch on that part of your back you can’t quite reach or a sucker-punch that nicks your ribcage and causes internal bleeding. And sometimes, the pursuit of love is like the acid-washed lyrics of a mid-sixties folk-rock band.
“A Serious Man” and “Coco Before Chanel” are not date movies. At the very least, they’re not movies to which you’d want to take a date you like. Romance takes a beating in the two films, and their respective scripts are relentlessly unapologetic in their realism. However, both address themes of love’s true meaning, and together, they find a similar answer that transcends the typical Hollywood trash and treacle.
“Coco Before Chanel” is a French language biopic that chronicles Gabrielle Chanel’s life from her childhood up until her breakthrough into the fashion world in 1919. Audrey Tautou (“The Da Vinci Code”) plays the precocious designer from her humble orphan roots, singing songs in French nightclubs, to her stint as a mistress for an upper crust Baron to the start of her designing career.
The movie’s main intrigue is Gabrielle’s (Coco is a nickname from her singing days ) choice between two men. One, the Baron ?tienne Balsan (played by the French actor Beno?t Poelvoorde), is an oft drunk old-money socialite whose fatherly but condescending presence has rescued Gabrielle from a life of poverty. The other is Arthur Capel (“Who Do You Love”), a dashing, roguish, self-made English businessman with fewer connections but a better understanding of Gabrielle’s fiercely independent streak.
However, neither man is really right for Gabrielle, who posits near the start of the film that, “The only interesting thing in love is making love,” then proceeds to contradict that statement with her relentless pursuit of a new standard in women’s fashion. It’s not that Gabrielle is incapable or uninterested in love itself, it’s more that she’s already found her passion, and it isn’t in the shape of a man.
Still, Gabrielle struggles unconvincingly with societal expectations. For instance, when Arthur takes her to the beach to see the ocean for the first time in her life, Gabrielle barely glances at the sea but cannot stop commenting on the ridiculous hats and beachwear of the women around her. Just as the designer inside her knows beaded feathers are unnecessary and outlandish, if Gabrielle were to engage in a real romance, it would need to be one without the frills and pretensions of early 20th century French aristocracy.
Several times during the film, it seems one of the men may have won her over, but invariably, something goes wrong. Through all this, Gabrielle builds a well-developed capability to fend for herself and slowly realizes what has been apparent to the viewer all along: When you love something as much as Gabrielle loves designing, the only way to be happy is to pursue that dream.
Gabrielle’s zeal is exactly what the main character in “A Serious Man” lacks. The Coen brothers’ (“Burn After Reading”) newest film has an anthem, and it’s “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane. The song plays twice during the movie, and its pounding chorus is a cruelly ironic mantra for Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, “Body of Lies”) who cannot find anyone or anything to love in his life.
To be fair, his life is not going well. “A Serious Man” picks up with the unraveling of Larry’s marriage and proceeds to pile obstacle after obstacle on his reluctant shoulders. Before the beleaguered physics professor can recover from the news that his wife (Sari Lennik, in her film debut) has “grown close” to another man, Larry receives an attempted bribe from a student, must deal with his son’s weed habit, whining and impending Bar Mitzvah, must take care of his medically troubled live-in brother and must protect his home’s property line from an enterprising neighbor. On top of all that, he’s under consideration for receiving tenure.
To say Larry handles his troubles ineffectively is something of an overstatement. Larry is run over by nearly every person he encounters, staunchly refusing to take any initiative until his cosmic complaint, “But I haven’t done anything,” begins to look like it may actually be the root of the problem.
“A Serious Man” borrows generously from the 1999 Best Picture “American Beauty.” Like Kevin Spacey playing Lester, Larry’s problems, unfair though they may seem, are actually caused by a lack of real passion in his life. Larry has nothing to fight for and no one fighting for him, and he lacks the drive to do anything about it.
Even when the man his wife now loves enters his home, Larry can’t bring himself to act or even raise his voice. The results are predictably tragic, as Larry is squeezed out into a nearby hotel. In short, Larry lacks self-respect. And if he can’t find that, he’ll remain forever defenseless against his myriad entanglements.
“When the truth is found to be lies/ And all the joy within you dies/ Don’t you want somebody to love.” Quite honestly, the Jefferson Airplane lyric would have fit in “Coco Before Chanel” just as well as it did in “A Serious Man” — you know, if Jefferson Airplane had been a classical quartet or a string orchestra — because the two movies’ messages are identical. You better find somebody to love. But first, you better make damn sure you love yourself.
