‘Nelly’ Lovingly Crafts a Tale of Ageless Wisdom

“He’s delicate and civilized, but he doesn’t miss a thing.” More than a line from Claude Sautet’s latest film, the exquisite and emotional “Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud,” that sentiment speaks to the film’s exceptional director as well.

A poet of bourgeois life whose films are known for scenes of sumptuous meals in enviable restaurants, Sautet had been a director in France for more than 20 years when films like “Cesar and Rosalie,” “Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others” and the Oscar-nominated “A Simple Story” brought him an American audience in the mid-1970s. After that flurry, Sautet once again disappeared from domestic screens.

With his last two films, however, “Nelly” and 1991’s “Un Coeur en Hiver,” which together were nominated for a whopping 20 Cesars, the 72-year-old director is back stronger than ever, raising the quality and intensity of his work while impressing the French film establishment by collecting the best director Cesar for both films.

Always adept at creating sympathetic portrayals, Sautet has added enough richness and depth to enable us to feel his characters’ troubles as intensely as we do our own. With his instinct for emotional truth and the vagaries of the human heart, Sautet has made films that have to be called wise, not because they attempt to have answers but because they illuminate lives and have a compassionate understanding of human frailty.

In “Nelly,” Sautet (who co-wrote the script with Jacques Fieschi and Yves Ulmann) takes as his text a line he gives one of his characters: “We all want to love, but when we find it we pull back. We’re afraid.” It’s a truism that holds for both Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, characters as different as the emblematic way the film treats their names.

Twenty-five-year-old Nelly (Emmanuelle Beart, the star of “Un Coeur”) is as young and casual as you might expect. Disinterestedly married to Jerome, an Oblomov-type individual who can’t be bothered to leave the house and look for work, Nelly supports them both with a series of unsatisfying part-time jobs.

One afternoon, after lunch with her friend Jacqueline (Claire Nadeau), Nelly is introduced to Monsieur Arnaud (Michel Serrault), a reserved, silver-haired gentleman who is old enough to be her grandfather.

When Jacqueline unexpectedly leaves them alone, Nelly and her new acquaintance talk in the intimate way strangers thrown together sometimes do. When Nelly mentions financial problems, Arnaud, a retired judge who has made a fortune in business, impulsively proposes to pay her debts. Nelly refuses, but clearly the offer intrigues her.

Now retired from business, Arnaud has been convinced by Vincent (Jean-Hugues Anglade), an aggressive young publisher, to write up his experiences as a tyro judge in the Leeward Islands. When the inevitable happens and Nelly’s marriage breaks up, she accepts Arnaud’s offer to come to his apartment daily and help him work his memoirs into shape. What ensues is life-changing for both of them, but in a much more delicate and subtle way than films are usually capable of conveying.

At first Nelly and Arnaud, taken by the way fate has thrown them together, engage in a kind of proto-flirting. Nelly is bemused by her distinguished employer, by his air of brusque and cranky dignity. They even go out to dinner, ordering a wine Arnaud describes as “older than you are” and enjoying the questioning stares they receive. Neither of them wants to label or characterize the emotions they’re experiencing.

Yet in their own ways Nelly and Arnaud are distant people, unused to closeness, and the unspoken but palpable feeling that exists between them soon starts to make them uncomfortable.

What’s happening to Arnaud is more obvious. Long separated from a wife who lives in Geneva, he is increasingly agitated by Nelly’s presence, almost disturbed to find that “certain desires never die.” He starts to tell her more about his life, including his connection with a mysterious friend named Dollabella (Michael Lonsdale). Serrault, known to American audiences for the original “La Cage aux Folles,” won the best actor Cesar for his ability to show us without words how discomforting it is for Arnaud to sense that his feelings are turning him into a cliche.

Nelly’s reaction is equally complex. Several men are intoxicated by her but it’s not immediately clear, even to herself, what any of them, including Arnaud, mean emotionally. Expertly played by Beart, who in ability and look is something of a French Michelle Pfeiffer, Nelly is divided and confused by her feelings and carries an air of melancholy, of the sadness of beauty, with her always.

With a story reminiscent of the one Krzysztof Kieslowski told in “Red,” “Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud” conveys erotic tension while never straying from a tone of satisfying ambiguity. A film about hope, longing and loss, it manages to be romantic and unconventional. What more more could you ask?

* Unrated. Times guidelines: adult themes and situations.

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‘Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud’

Emmanuelle Beart: Nelly

Michel Serrault: Monsieur Arnaud

Jean-Hugues Anglade: Vincent

Claire Nadeau: Jacqueline

Francoise Brion: Lucie

Michele Laroque: Isabelle

Michael Lonsdale: Dollabella

Charles Berling: Jerome

A Les Films Alain Sarde, TF1 Films Production, Cecchi Gori Tiger Group Cinematografica SRL, Prokino Filmproduktion GMBH production, released by Artificial Eye. Director Claude Sautet. Producer Alain Sarde. Screenplay Claude Sautet, Jacques Fieschi, Yves Ulmann. Cinematographer Jean-Francois Robin. Editor Jacqueline Thiedot. Costumes Catherine Bouchard, Marie Piazzola. Set decorator Carlos Conti. Sound supervisor Pierre Lenoir. Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.

* Exclusively at Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869; and NuWilshire, 1314 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 394-8099; additional theaters added Friday.