also, I watched the movie for the second time with a friend, he didn't know much about it prior to watching it, and he really struggled with the names afterwards when we discussed it, so we called the characters "the painter" "the blonde" "the mother" "the maid". So it's true, those who aren't as deep in the movie and its details like us can easily forget the characters' names. And the "vous" thing is tricky, now I wonder did they switch to informal on their last night together or before that?
Okay, so about the “vous”/”tu” thing…
I’m going to combine here the answers I received from @jennylouwho81 and @ladyonfire28--thank you to both of you!--who collectively blew my mind with the revelation that for a brief shining moment, Marianne used the informal form:
Just gotta throw it out there that the “retourne-toi” at the end is not the VERY first/only lapsing of the informal. On their last night together, right before Marianne kisses Héloïse into wakefulness and the conversation about regret/remembrance ensues, she tells Héloïse 4 times not to fall asleep…using the informal “tu” form of the verb “dormir.” “Ne dors pas. Ne dors pas, ne dors pas, ne dors pas.” NOT “ne dormez pas.”
which was confirmed by @ladyonfire28:
it’s true, Marianne is the first one to use the informal you (tu) when she says “ne dors pas” in bed. But then she goes back to the formal you (vous) later in the conversation. It was just for that specific sentence.
Okay. Okay okay okay okay.
I can’t imagine that this isn’t specific in the script. Adele has spoken about “improvisation” on the set not being about suggesting adlib lines, but about delivery and pacing and rhythm. So it means that Celine very much most likely wrote it exactly like that in the script. We also know that Celine was intent on being “playful” with the love story and that’s actually probably why she didn’t deviate from the “vous”…
Except for (maybe only) two instances??
Okay okay okay okay.
So, when I originally thought that Heloise was the one daring into the informal, I thought that was a really interesting choice to have her be the one to embark on the familiar, to have it be her, the one most bound by restrictions and social decorum/expectations/prescriptions to break the unspoken formality–and thus the boundaries of the permissible between her and Marianne–and especially to have it be her final spoken line.
But. But. Y’all are telling me that Marianne briefly, in like a moment’s exception, breaches that unspoken, implicit taboo between them. And this is after they’ve established that neither will possess the other. And it’s in a line that’s very, very playful and tender. Like Marianne coaxes Heloise almost teasingly/jokingly not to fall asleep–and caps it with a sweet kiss–and then they revert to the rules of (speech) formality??? Like the formal reasserts itself? So it’s like… it’s like akin to how the time Marianne and Heloise spend physically intimate with one another is also like a “slip” in the larger context of their lives, a moment in time when they skirted social pressures and rules with one another, and this moment when Marianne speaks this playful line is also delivered on the cusp of them returning to the larger world and its restrictions, i.e. the formalities (and normalities)???
Okay.
And then Heloise doesn’t “return” the use of the informal until her final line–also a command/request!–until her last spoken words to Marianne???? One last lifeline thrown out there?? (If, indeed, Heloise did speak it… There’s a lot of ambiguity around this scene and I think it can be argued whether or not Heloise was there or, if Heloise was there, whether or not Heloise spoke at all. I invite the ambiguity and lovingly embrace both possibilities.) And, again, this line comes in a moment when the Larger World is about to effectively swallow them up and cut them off from one another??? That the last thing Marianne should hear is Heloise addressing her familiarly? That they each only dare it once (on screen–and that’s important because Celine is deliberate about what goes “in the frame”)?
Okay.
I don’t have any actual concrete thought or commentary to articulate surrounding this yet, but how interesting. Because I think you can read into the formalities as a way of distancing–of holding onto two truths at once: that the physical intimacy between the women is real, yes, but it’s frightening to put it into language, to label it, to transgress, in a way via the informal, to acknowledging the intimacy in a concrete, voiced way. Just like there is no word for “lesbian” and how sometimes things without names aren’t acknowledged as “real” in a sense of having existence in a collectively shared culture. And so this careful use of language is also a way to reflect how we are so careful with language about ourselves, that sometimes we can’t name what we feel because it hasn’t been given a name, how language can fail us, how can we can afraid to embark on intimate language because it doesn’t feel like the “right” language or we don’t feel permitted to use it?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
*stares blankly off into the distance*
