Under the Sand [Blu-ray]

Charlotte Rampling Director: François Ozon, Marc Missonier, Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier François Ozon

Overview

Noted French filmmaker François Ozon directs this drama about personal loss and resilience. Marie (Charlotte Rampling) is deeply in love with her husband, Jean (Bruno Cremer). One day while vacationing at the seashore, Jean disappears into the ocean. A distraught Marie notifies the authorities, but sadly, they find no trace of her beloved husband. Later, back in Paris, Marie attends a dinner party hosted by her friend Amanda (Alexandra Stewart); over the course of dinner, it emerges that Marie and Jean had been married for 25 years. Marie speaks of Jean as if he were still alive, something that disturbs Amanda's fellow dinner guests, and after she is driven home by Vincent (Jacques Nolot), another guest, Marie sees Jean in her apartment and at breakfast the next morning. It quickly becomes apparent that Marie's imagination enables her to go along in life as if nothing happened to Jean, but as she slowly becomes involved with Vincent, she begins to cope with the fact that she is in fact living on her own. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx

Product Details

Release Date:	06/08/2021
UPC:	0738329254384
Original Release:	2000
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kino Classics
Language:	English
Time:	1:45:00
Sales rank:	31,045

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Charlotte Rampling	Marie Drillon
Bruno Cremer	Jean Drillon
Jacques Nolot	Vincent
Alexandra Stewart	Amanda
Pierre Vernier	Gerard
Andrée Tainsy	Suzanne
Maya Gaugler	l'Allemande
Damien Abbou	le secouriste
David Portugais	le jeune secouriste
Pierre Soubestre	le policier
Agathe Teyssier	la responsable du magasin de luxe
Laurence Martin	l'agent immobilier
Jean-François Lapalus	Paris doctor
Laurence Mercier	Paris doctor's secretary
Fabienne Luchetti	Pharmacist
Jo Doumerg	Taxi driver
Michel Cordes	Superintendent
Maurice Antoni	Landes doctor
Patricia Couvillers	Evelyne
Patrick Grieco	Jose
Axelle Bossard	Student
Charlotte Gerbault	Nurse
Nicole Lartigue	Morgue attendant
Andree Tainsey	Actor
Philippe Rombi	Composer
Cliff Eidelman	Composer

Technical Credits

François Ozon

Emmanuèle Bernheim

Marcia Romano

Marina de Van

François Ozon	Director,Screenwriter
Antoinette Boulat	Casting
Olivier Delbosc	Producer,Director
Marc Missonnier	Producer,Director
Emmanuèle Bernheim	Screenwriter,Screenwriter
Marcia Romano	Screenwriter
Marina de Van	Screenwriter
Jean-Luc Audy	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Christophe Bourreau	Sound Effects
Olivier Busson	Sound Effects
Benoît Hillebrant	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Jean-Pierre Laforce	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Marc Missonier	Director

Editorial Reviews

What do you do when someone you love simply vanishes? It’s a question that has gained particular, painful relevance in light of September 11th, and one that is examined deeply -- and on a determinedly small scale -- in François Ozon’s Under the Sand. Marie (the still stunning 70’s icon Charlotte Rampling) and Jean (Bruno Cremer) are a blissfully married middle-aged French couple. Their love is palpable, their lives perfect. On a beach vacation, as Marie dozes on the sand, Jean goes for a swim and never returns. Even long after he’s gone, Marie refuses to accept his absence and continues to check with him about everything from what she’s wearing to what he thinks of the lover she eventually takes. This borderline-obsessive clinging to a dead partner has been covered before -- notably with touching good humor in Truly, Madly, Deeply and with a full and effective dose of Hollywood hokum in Ghost. But here, Ozon temporarily abandons his position as the bad boy of French cinema and treats the subject with a burnished, stately pace, willing to go further than any of his predecessors -- even into the realm of madness -- in his search for the meaning to be found in absence. With the help of the always riveting Rampling, Under the Sand makes a lasting impression on the viewer as it delves into the deepest waters of communication, love, commitment, and grief.

Barnes & Noble

Sous le Sable belongs to Charlotte Rampling. Delivering a commanding, devastating, and nuanced performance, Rampling portrays Marie Drillon, a middle-aged professor who goes through an emotional roller coaster after the sudden disappearance of her husband. Rampling beautifully handles Marie's various transformations, making it appear outwardly as if she is coping with reality, while inwardly she is collapsing. The writing occasionally lets Rampling down -- the story's twists and turns eventually strain credibility, the scenes do not always work to their fullest potential, and the forced ambiguity of the ending is unnecessary. Still, director Francois Ozon also makes some strong choices. For instance, allowing the audience to see Jean when Marie sees him helps viewers to identify with her. And in Marie's encounter with Jean's mother Suzanne, the subtle hatred between the two women slowly escalates, nearly reaching a stage of vitriol at the end. Ozon also confidently handles such tricky and potentially cliché-ridden scenes as Marie's visit to her husband's study, which could have been heavy-handed but instead is quite moving, and Marie's first time making love to someone other than Jean. Bruno Cremer also turns in a sensitive, almost silent performance as Jean, but this is ultimately Charlotte Rampling's film.

All Movie Guide

And, of course, it's the coming of old age written on Rampling's once flawless face and body -- the slight sag under the chin, the softened line of the shoulder. What makes this film so different from, for example, Truly, Madly, Deeply or the infinitely more maudlin Ghost is that the heroine is not a young woman. But since, as we well know, beauty is more than skin deep, Rampling has never been as beautiful, not to mention as emotionally naked, nuanced, and affecting as she is here. It's no slight to Ozon's direction to say that the virtue of the film is its minimalism -- the fact that it can be reduced to the relationship between camera and actress.

Village Voice - Amy Taubin

[T]he common human experience of grief becomes intoxicatingly, sometimes comically strange. There is something reminiscent of Hitchcock in the way Mr. Ozon keeps his audience, and his characters, slightly off balance and also in the way he deploys music - Philippe Rombi's spiky, melancholy score, as well as selections from Dvorak, Mahler and Chopin - to signal emotions trembling beneath the polished visual surface.

New York Times - A.O. Scott