The directorial debut of actress Brigitte Roüan, who also has a role on screen in it; and of course a semi-autobiographical debut, as sure as she's French. A movie that calls attention to its structure, it tells the stories of three grown sisters in postwar colonial Algeria, taking up each sister in turn and going over the same chronological ground three consecutive times instead of cross-cutting so as to be in three places at once. The result is not a Rashomon -- three perspectives on one set of shared incidents -- but rather three separate short stories with shared characters and only a smattering of shared incidents. (What's central in one story is marginal in another.) The first of the three stories, about the wife of a much-absent naval officer, putters along lullingly to a boldly conceived and acted (by Nicole Garcia) denial of death. And by the time it's through, the story has become so compelling that it is hard to imagine the succeeding ones can compete. But the second, about the pants-wearing wife (Roüan herself) of a passive viniculturalist, grabs hold also, after another, similar lull. This is the art that proverbially imitates life, not because it looks or sounds like life but because it feels like, develops like, takes root like, consumes like life. The third heroine (Marianne Basler), who hadn't seemed at all interesting in the first two stories, turns out to have a life too. But the illicit affair with an Algerian rebel seems somewhat predictable, obligatory, balancing, base-covering. The cumulative effect could reasonably be termed -- but let's borrow the French grammatical form -- a film feminist. Film first; feminist second. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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