Based on the best-selling novel Aimez-vous Brahms? (Do You Like Brahms?) by Françoise Sagan, and directed by Anatole Litvak, Goodbye Again is a poignant, bittersweet romantic drama about the tragedy of impossible relationships and unrequited love.
Paula Tessier (Ingrid Bergman) is a forty-something interior decorator living in Paris in 1961. For the past five years she’s been in a relationship with Roger Demarest (Yves Montand), a farm tractor importer / exporter. Paula knows Roger is an inveterate womanizer who cheats on her with an endless line of vapid, young women, all of whom he calls Maisie. However, because of her low self-esteem, insecurity or the naïve belief that she can change Roger, Paula clings to him and refuses to end the relationship. Roger claims he loves Paula, but he’s too self-centered and egotistical to give up his freedom as a womanizer. If Paula was honest with herself, she’d recognize that Roger was never going to change and their relationship was going nowhere.
One day Roger gives Paula the name of a wealthy American divorcee, Teresa Van der Besh (Jessie Royce Landis), who needs a decorator for her Paris apartment. Mrs. Van der Besh has a 25-year-old son Philip (Anthony Perkins), an attorney who is studying international law with a Paris law firm. Philip is immature, melancholy, directionless, spoiled, and has a penchant for play-acting at being physically injured or deformed. When he meets Paula, he becomes hopelessly infatuated with the attractive, cosmopolitan middle-aged woman, and insists that their fifteen-year age difference is no barrier to a romance.
Flattered by the novelty of having a young admirer, and plagued by Roger's serial infidelities, Paula does little to discourage Philip's persistent advances. He drives her around town in his little Triumph TR3 sports car, revealing his romantic philosophy in the process. They lunch in an outdoor restaurant and attend a Brahms concert.
When Roger goes on an extended international business trip, Paula allows herself to begin an affair with Philip, convinced she can change him like she changes the décor of an apartment, even though she’s tried, without success, to change Roger. At this point, although she may not realize it, Paula is involved with two men who act like irresponsible little boys and refuse to grow up
[Twenty years later, in 1983, psychologist Dan Kiley would define this as the Peter Pan Syndrome. He would also use the term Wendy Syndrome to describe women who act like mothers to their Peter Pan partners. So both Roger and Philip are Peter Pan, and Paula is Wendy.]
Eventually, Paula can no longer deny the reality that Philip is irresponsible, childish, indecisive, indolent, slovenly and unable to develop a passion for his work. All of this, plus her self-conscious guilt over having such a young lover, ultimately forces her to end their brief affair.
Litvak uses the recurrent theme of circles to convey the sense that the lives of these three people are going nowhere. There are scenes in which Philip drives aimlessly around the traffic circles of Paris in order to pass the time, and after Paula breaks up with Philip, she watches him as he descends a long, spiral staircase. Brahms' Symphony No. 3, whose melody has a cyclical theme, is used throughout the film, including a haunting blues version sung to Philip by a night club singer (Diahann Carroll), which reflects the hopelessness of Philip’s love for Paula, and of Paula’s love for Roger.
Bergman, Montand and Perkins are all excellent in their roles, and Perkins, especially, shows exceptional depth as the lost and vulnerable Philip. Paula is tolerant, forgiving and continually disappointed, Roger is self-indulgent and egotistical, and Philip is directionless and hopeless. Sadly, there is nothing positive or uplifting about this romantic drama, just the reality that these three people have learned nothing and will continue to enact the same patterns over and over.
Labels: drama, Ingrid Bergman, Paris, romance, Sixties
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