A Heart in Winter


A Heart in Winter is a French film which was released in 1992. It stars Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil and André Dussollier. It was chosen to compete at the 49th Venice International Film Festival, where it won four awards, including tying for the Silver Lion. It was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1994 BAFTA awards.
The romantic drama was the second-to-last film made by French writer/director Claude Sautet. He would work with Béart again on his final feature, 1995's Nelly and Mr. Arnaud.

Plot

Highly regarded violin restorer Stéphane works and plays squash with his longtime business partner Maxime. After Maxime, who is married, begins romancing concert violinist Camille, Stéphane is called in to do some urgent repairs on Camille's violin. Camille begins to fall for Stéphane, and reveals the truth to Maxime. Stéphane's cool reaction causes confusion for Camille, and she lashes out at him for denying his feelings.

Cast

The film features a number of performances of chamber music composed by Maurice Ravel, played by Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Howard Shelley and Keith Harvey. New Zealand musician Jeffrey Grice appears in the film in the role of the pianist.
The film contains only excerpts of Ravel compositions, but the soundtrack album includes them in their entirety, performed by Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Philippe Muller and Jacques Rouvier. A fourth Ravel composition not excerpted in the film, Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faure, is on the soundtrack album. The film helped further popularise especially Ravel's Piano Trio. The track listing:
  1. Trio Pour Piano, Violon Et Violoncelle
  2. * i. Premier Mouvement
  3. * ii. Pantoum
  4. * iii. Passacaille
  5. * iv. Final
  6. Sonata Pour Violon Et Violoncelle
  7. * i. Allegro
  8. * ii. Très Vif
  9. * iii. Vif, Avec Entrain
  10. Sonate Pour Violon Et Piano
  11. * i. Premier Mouvement
  12. * ii. Blues
  13. * iii. Perpetuum Mobile
  14. Berceuse Sur Le Nom De Gabriel Fauré
Actor Emmanuelle Béart practised violin for at least a year before the film began shooting, so that she could convincingly mime the performance sequences.

Production notes

Béart and Auteuil were in a real-life relationship and married during the making of this film.
Claude Sautet based it on his memories of reading Russian Mikhail Lermontov's "Princess Mary".
The film is distributed by Koch-Lorber Films.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 85% based on reviews from 13 critics.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4, and wrote: "Un Coeur en Hiver, directed by Claude Sautet, has the intensity and delicacy of a great short story."