Haven’t you noticed, asks the closing
epigram of Peter Handke’s The Left-Handed Woman, that there is space
only for the one who brings space himself…? Acknowledging that the precision of
the subtitles may only extend so far, it’s an apt closure; the conversational
tone emphasizing the film’s investigative qualities, its questioning of the
interplay between inner and outer lives. The choice of “himself” could be puzzling
in this context, and yet the credits that follow identify Edith Clever’s protagonist
only as “die Frau,” even though the film itself does give her a name, Marianne;
her husband on the other hand is identified as “Bruno,” the same name as the
actor playing him, Bruno Ganz, seemingly setting out its own little puzzle
regarding the relative identifiability and tangibility of the two
character/actor presences. The film revolves around a German couple living in
Paris (summing up the pervasive sense of dislocation) – he returns from a
business trip to Finland professing his renewed joy in their relationship, to
which she soon responds by instigating a split; he moves out and she goes on
living in their house with their young son, gradually constructing a revised personal
and social equilibrium. Marianne talks very little (her first words come so far
into the film that one might have assumed her to be mute) and explains herself
less, demanding that we take her on her own terms, an act of feminist sympathy
which however does carry the offsetting effect of rendering her something of an
abstraction (her relationship with her main female friend Franziska is also one
of few words, although provides a key moment of validation when, after earlier
flailing to understand Marianne’s choices, Franziska finally allows that “now even
I want to be alone”). But it’s a satisfying film overall, with numerous secondary
mysteries including the brief presence of Gerard Depardieu, billed as “Mann mit
dem T-shirt,” which indeed sums up his contribution exactly.
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