B+

French director Patrice Leconte has become one of the most consistently intriguing of all contemporary filmmakers. “Monsieur Hire” (1989) was a brilliant examination of voyeurism, “The Hairdresser’s Husband” (1990) an extravagantly rich depiction of a fantasy marriage, and last year’s “Girl on the Bridge” a remarkably successful recreation of the free-wheeling romantic sprees of the New Wave. All of these films deal, more or less seriously, with sexual obsession–a subject that runs through his work. But while one can glimpse that theme in his new film as well, it’s treated more obliquely; based on an actual incident, “The Widow of Saint-Pierre” is a period piece set in 1850 on a French island off the coast of Newfoundland, where the captain of the local military regiment (Daniel Auteuil) and his lovely wife (Juliette Binoche) are caught up in the case of Neel Auguste (Emir Kusturica), a man convicted of a mindless murder and sentenced to death. Since the island has neither the facilities for capital punishment (which, in the case of the French Republic, meant a guillotine) nor a resident executioner, the local civilian officials must negotiate with the home government to meet the demands of justice. While the details are being worked out, the captain and his wife treat their prisoner with extraordinary kindness and courtesy, in effect reintroducing him to the populace, which eventually embraces him and comes to oppose carrying out the judgment; in their hands the condemned man becomes in fact a different person, a veritable pillar of the community with a new wife and a child on the way, and the transformation brings the couple, aloof and seemingly haughty to begin with, into conflict with the local authorities over his execution–with tragic results.

It would be far too simplistic to view “The Widow of Saint-Pierre” (actually, there will be two such widows before events are played out, as well as an inanimate third–the guillotine–which was called that in nineteenth-century slang) as some sort of tract about the cruelty of capital punishment as against the potential for rehabilitation, although that’s certainly part of what it’s about. Rather the film is best seen as a complement to Leconte’s earlier period picture, “Ridicule” (1996), which told the story of a provincial nobleman who comes to the court of the doomed Louis XVI in the 1780s to seek the king’s patronage for a plan to improve peasant life by draining the swamps that reduce the land’s productivity–only to find that the sole thing the royal entourage values is a cynical rapier wit. “Ridicule” essentially showed how the ostensibly “enlightened” era of pre-revolutionary France, with its ideals of humanitarianism and scientific rationality, was in most respects a sham–a period which actually prized brutal, contemptuous verbal bloodsport over reasoned argument. “The Widow of Saint-Pierre” takes us into the post-revolutionary epoch, and shows how the high-minded notions of the Enlightenment were again spurned as the French polity lurched into disorder following the revolution of 1848 and the establishment of the weak Second Republic (soon to be transformed into Napoleon III’s Second Empire). What distinguishes the captain and his wife–apart from their abiding, but highly intellectualized love for one another–is a profound commitment to the most fundamental aspects of enlightened thought: a firm belief in the conception of man as inherently good, in the transforming power of environment and education, in rehabilitation as an alternative to capital punishment, and in the humane treatment of criminals. It’s their principled adherence to these ideas and their determination to follow through on them, as much as their superior attitude, that set them apart from the local civilian authorities and ultimately cause their ruin. Even in the face of calamity they refuse to abandon their beliefs, preferring to sacrifice themselves rather than act in an “unenlightened” way.

All this might seem too intellectualized for a successful movie, and many viewers will probably be turned off by the picture’s stately pace, the very reserved demeanor of the principal characters (only rarely do the captain and his wife permit themselves any real display of emotion, and even then they appear slightly embarrassed by it), the opaque way in which motivations are depicted, and a general tone that’s chilly and remote. Those who are willing to give themselves over to Leconte’s rarefied style, cerebral interests and detail-oriented storytelling will, however, find themselves amply rewarded. The film is wonderfully evocative of its unusual setting and era. Visually it’s extraordinarily beautiful, filled with stunning, wide-screen compositions fashioned by cinematographer Eduardo Sarra. The acting is superb, too. Binoche is radiant as a woman determined to put her progressive ideals to the test, and Auteuil, despite the stiffness of his character’s bearing, is remarkably successful in suggesting the captain’s absolute fidelity to the values he cherishes, whatever the risk. The captain and his wife might seem at first glance like stick figures, but as Auteuil and Binoche play them, they’re gradually revealed as people whose deep reservoirs of feeling are concealed beneath the placid surface demanded by the requirements of public performance and official duty. Kusturica, a Yugoslav director in his acting debut, can’t match the sophistication of Binoche and Auteuil, but he captures the killer’s initial roughness and gradual acculturation well. The secondary players have all been nicely chosen for both their looks and their skills: as a group they paint a convincing portrait of an isolated nineteenth-century community, an illusion to which set decorator Ivan Maussion and costume designer Christian Gasc contribute as well.

If there’s a serious flaw in “The Widow of Saint-Pierre,” it’s that the presentation of the conflict over the fate of the convicted Auguste is very one-sided, without the subtleties of shading found, for example, in Tim Robbins’ superb “Dead Man Walking” (1995). The proponents of the execution come across as little more than stock villains, misguided, pompous and needlessly harsh. The historical background to the tale might also have been more skillfully delineated; the suggestion is that the ramifications of French political strife are finding their way into a decidedly marginal locale, but how is never really made clear. And for many the motivations of the principal characters will remain frustratingly obscure. (How that might have been rectified is difficult to say. It would have been far worse had the captain and his wife ostentatiously quoted Voltaire or Beccaria to support their views.) On balance, however, Leconte’s film is a treat for the eye and the mind, a haunting and penetrating portrayal of an intriguing incident in a distant time and place.