The 1993 French film Ma Saison Préférée is a small, subtle film about family relationships. Essentially, the story investigates the manner in which two estranged middle-aged siblings, Emilie (Deneuve) and Antoine (Auteuil), are drawn together when their mother (Villalonga) becomes sick and unable to care for herself. Any more detailed description would endanger the movie by making it sound more eventful than it actually is. For this is a movie of ambiguities and analyses, a frank study of some of the games that grown-ups play. It’s rare to see the complexities of adult family life portrayed on the screen, much less with the degree of detail and honesty presented in Ma Saison Préférée. As the middle-aged, middle-class brother and sister, Deneuve and Auteuil deliver fascinating performances. With this movie, we acknowledge, perhaps for the first time in her career, the maturity of Deneuve, whose aging flesh still radiates a peerless beauty, albeit that of a 45-year-old woman instead of an alabaster princess. Auteuil (who just won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his work in the upcoming film The Eighth Day) is a perfect match for Deneuve. Their relationship ranges from stormy to passionate to frigid and sets the tone for their relationships with all others. Former Cahiers du Cinema film critic and subsequent director of the vastly acclaimed Wild Reeds, André Téchiné has the good sense to allow his characters to run the show, frequently allowing them to engage inexplicable or contradictory actions — something that makes them seem even more true to life. At times, the whole affair takes too analytic a bent, verbalizing and philosophizing with that decidedly French zeal for the abstract. Yet, in the realm of intelligent, mature-adult drama, there is little on the horizon to match the fortitude of Ma Saison Préférée.
This article appears in September 20 • 1996 (Cover).
