3 Days in Quiberon (5 Stars)

This is one of the best films that I saw in 2018, but I've only just got round to buying it on Blu-ray. I already owned the other nine films in my top 10.

The documentary "Romy" gives more information about Romy Schneider's life, but "3 Days in Quiberon" is more successful in baring her soul. We see her as a 42-year-old woman who's a household name, famous in France and Germany, but she's broke. She loves her children, but she can't spend time with them because she's on a non-stop schedule making films. The money she made in Germany alone, when she was still a teenager, should have been enough to keep her for the rest of her life. In the film she blames her parents for taking her money. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but she earned a lot of money in France that they were unable to touch. She once said, "I spent most of my money on men, alcohol and clothes. I wasted the rest". That's an amusing statement, but it's not an explanation.

"3 Days in Quiberon" is about an interview she gave with the ruthless Stern reporter Michael Jürgs in 1981. She was in a health spa, detoxing her body not only from alcohol but also from unhealthy food. It's strange that they allowed her to continue smoking. Cigarettes are always unhealthy, but she was a chain smoker who was destroying her lungs. She was also addicted to sleeping pills. And the alcohol abstinence was only monitored in the spa itself. In the evenings she spent time at dockside bars where she could drown her sorrows with champagne.

Maybe the champagne was necessary. The film shows her as sad and brooding, but when she's in the bar she comes to life, laughing and dancing. When she sits in her hotel room with Michael Jürgs she complains about the problems in her life: her problems with her father, her husbands and her children. She wants things to change, but she doesn't know how.

Romy wants to get away from her teenage films as Sissi, the Empress of Austria. That was all in the past. Maybe that was her mistake. In her years as Sissi she was leading a clean life as a well-behaved teenager. Her life of scandals and revolving door male partners didn't start until she moved to France. She shouldn't have left Sissi behind.

Maybe she just chose the wrong men. The interview reunites her with the Stern photographer Robert Lebeck, a man with whom she'd had an almost-affair ten years previously. He wasn't aggressive with her. He wasn't abusive. That's probably the reason they never got anywhere. In their previous meeting he'd slept next to her all night without having sex. He didn't want to take advantage of her. Now she's overjoyed to see him again. What would her life have been if she'd married him?

In the film Michael Jürgs savagely attacks her with direct questions. Robert repeatedly winces and looks at him with disgust. Stern was (and still is) a respectable magazine, but he had the style of someone working for a scandal column. His style was appreciated by his bosses. Five years later he was promoted to editor-in-chief. After Romy's death he wrote a biography of her life. The book praises her highly, which is maybe his redemption for hounding her in his final interview.

If Romy looked happy in the photos taken for the interview, it was because they were taken by Robert Lebeck. After the interview he visited her at her home in Paris. Maybe they could finally have come together as lovers, but she died a year later of a heart attack. The cigarettes were the main contributing factor.

This is a deeply emotional film. It's only been released in Germany and France, without English subtitles, so it's a film very few of my readers will be able to see.