Review: Seven Days… Seven Nights had potential, but ultimately falls flat

This week, I watched Seven Days… Seven Nights (also known as Moderato Cantabile), which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau. It was released in France in 1960, and was based on a novella by Marguerite Duras.

This review contains spoilers, so if you want to watch it beforehand, you can do so via this link.*

*A quick note about the particular version of the movie this links to: This is apparently a French film, but the dialogue sounds more to me like Italian. There’s no explanation in the video description, but there’s a possibility it’s been dubbed over. Nothing to spice up your weekend like an Italian-dubbed French film with English subtitles! (And hey, when you’re hard-of-hearing, it’s all pretty much the same anyway!)

The premise is promising: Chauvin (Belmondo) and Anne (Moreau) meet at a cafe shortly after witnessing a murder that took place earlier. They start chatting about it, sharing gossip and theories. Although Anne is (unhappily) married to Chauvin’s employer, she and Chauvin are attracted to one another, and begin to meet more regularly to discuss the murder. At Anne’s request, Chauvin continues to offer his “guesses" as to why the murder took place. It soon becomes clear that Chauvin’s “speculations" mirror his relationship with Anne, raising suspicions that he was not only involved with the first murder, but is now plotting a second—and Anne is the target.

Unfortunately, a lack of intrigue, counterintuitively combined with a lack of necessary details, keeps this film from being as interesting as it could have. First of all, from the very beginning, Chauvin’s theories are so on the nose that the viewer is apt to catch on almost immediately, and spend the rest of the movie yelling at Moreau’s character for not figuring it out sooner. We could argue that this was an intentional choice: By exposing Chauvin right away, the mystery then lies in how he will go about killing her, as opposed to wondering if he will.

But even so, we still aren’t give us much along the way to move the plot forward. Once that initial revelation occurs early in their conversations, there’s nowhere else to go—at least, director Peter Brook doesn’t take it anywhere interesting. We don’t get the satisfaction of watching things lock into place; rather, the same puzzle pieces are merely shifted around for another hour, leaving the plot to flatline until the final climax (if you could even call it a climax).

Speaking of which, the movie actually ends exactly as it should: There’s a confrontation between Anne and Chauvin, and contrary to what we’re lead to believe will happen, Chauvin does not kill her. He instead leaves her weeping in the cafe by herself, until her husband (who went out to look for her) arrives to bring her home. It's a twist on what you’re led to believe up until that point, but is well done in that it doesn't feel predictable (like so many “twists” are these days).

However, I still have a problem with this ending, because it doesn't feel earned. Certain plot elements aren't built up enough, and the characters aren't fleshed out enough, to make the ending fulfilling. We’re also left with some unanswered questions: At one point, Chauvin makes direct, seemingly knowing eye contact with the other murder suspect, but we never learn whether Chauvin himself had anything to do with that first murder. Furthermore, the ending leads us to believe he did at one point intend to kill Anne, but indicates he has a change of heart. However, any reasons for that change of heart are not fully explored.

The husband coming to look for Anne is just as confusing. Was this intended to make the viewer feel Anne ended up with the right man after all? Until then, we don’t see any indications of him softening or having redeeming qualities. Perhaps it wasn’t intended to be a kind gesture — maybe the point was that, as a consequence of her actions, Anne ends up with nothing: She chased after a man who was a potential murderer, but still winds up with her emotionally-abusive husband.

This was only my first viewing, so perhaps there are answers to all of these that I just didn’t catch the first time around. And even if they are left unanswered, I’m left wondering if that was intentional: Did I completely miss the point?

The entire movie is like this: Each scene or character choice prompts a seesaw of speculation as to the intentions of the director and writers. For every statement I’ve made, a case can be made against it to argue that everything was in fact well thought out, and that the film is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Like Chauvin, we have been left to our own devices; to spin our own tales and fill in the gaps using our imaginations.

Which begs another question: Do we as viewers need explanations and straight answers in order for a movie to be considered good?

For this particular movie, I can only conclude that even if ambiguity was the point, enough pieces were missing that the ambiguity didn’t feel intentional. It felt like someone just dropped the ball.

Neither of the film’s leads are to blame for any of this: Moreau paints an unnerving portrait of a woman slowly coming undone; most notably when her character has a nervous breakdown after a dinner party she and her husband host for their fancy, rich friends. Belmondo isn’t given much to work with dialogue-wise, but manages to add the appropriate layers to his character: He’s enticing and flirtatious in the beginning, but becomes ominously threatening as time goes on. The scenes and moments where these elements are on display were instrumental to the storyline; but because there was no cement between the bricks, they felt disjointed and unattached from the rest of the movie.

All in all, Seven Days… Seven Nights lives up to the first part of its French title: Moderato.